Page 18 of Homecoming Heartbreaker

Mack pulled his attention back to what had initially caught his attention—Beth leaning over Molly’s desk, her finger in his ex’s face. Nobody treated Molly like that and he was surprised she put up with it. Molly was, after all, Beth’s boss.

“You weren’t having a friendly, let’s-catch-up chat,” Mack stated. He locked eyes with Beth and studied her, keeping his expression flat and cold.

She brazenly held his eyes for ten seconds, then twenty. At twenty-five, she started to waver and by thirty her eyes had dropped to look at the floor.

“You were looming over her desk and your finger was in Molly’s face—”

“We were discussing a family matter—” Beth interrupted him. As a child, before he came to live with Jameson, he could never ever finish a sentence without his biological father overriding or deriding him. As a result, he loathed being interrupted.

Strike two.

“Mack, just leave it alone,” Molly jumped in and he heard the I-can-deal-with-this in her voice.

He ignored her and kept his eyes on Beth. “Molly is your boss. Personal discussions can take place outside of work. And if I ever see you looming over her and jamming your finger in her face again, you will be dismissed, instantly.”

Beth’s expression turned ugly. “You can’t do that.”

“Mack!”

Mack ignored Molly and sent Beth a cold, hard smile. “Do you want to test me on that?”

Beth opened her mouth to blast him, thought better of it—clever girl—and sent Molly a vicious, I’ll-see-you-in-hell look. Picking up a folder from her desk, she slapped it against her thigh, released a frustrated huff and barreled toward the door. Mack just managed to move out of the way; if he hadn’t, her shoulder would’ve bumped his arm as she passed by.

Good thing she didn’t or else her ass would be toast.

Mack turned to watch her storm down the hallway, a little uneasy. Yeah, he instinctively didn’t like her. He was quite sure the feeling was mutual and didn’t give a damn.

Turning his attention back to Molly, he looked across the room to find her glaring at him. He lifted his hands in a what-did-I-do gesture. “What?”

Molly put her hands on her desk, shoved her chair back and shot to her feet. “That was a private conversation and you had no right to interfere!”

Mack jammed his hands into the pockets of his chino pants. “That wasn’t a conversation. She was threatening you.”

“She was not threatening me!” Molly retorted, so quickly that he knew she was lying. “And, even if she was, I’m a big girl. I can fight my own battles. I don’t need you to defend me anymore, Mack.”

He’d been her protector as a kid, standing between her and her bigger, older, meaner brothers. She’d been an easy target for those two bullies until he, and his brothers, made it clear Molly was off-limits.

Back then the three Holloway brothers had been a force to be reckoned with.

The day they heard Grant and Vincent would be leaving the resort, they cheered loudly, happy to be rid of them. Then they realized that Molly would be leaving, too. Mack begged Jameson to allow Molly to move in with them; they needed a sister, he’d pleaded.

He hadn’t spoken to Jameson for two days when he told them that Molly had to leave with her family.

Mack looked into her flashing eyes and felt the stirring in his pants. Yeah, it had been a long, long time since he thought of Molly Haskell in a sisterly way.

Mack dropped into the chair on the other side of her desk and placed his elbows on the arms and made a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs. Something was going on with her and Beth and he wanted to know the source of their quarrel. Why? He had no damn idea.

“What did she say to you?” Mack asked.

“None of your damn business,” Molly said, sinking down into her chair again and pushing her fingers into her curls, dislodging her scarf. She cursed, pulled it off her head and tossed it onto the desk and her beautiful corkscrew curls fell over her face. He remembered her curls brushing his chest as her mouth trailed across his skin, brushing his stomach...

He hardened instantly and Mack silently cursed.Display a little control, Holloway, for the love of God!

Molly lifted her head, straightened her keyboard and mouse pad before turning to look at him again, her eyes shuttered and her expression blank. “Was there something you wanted from me or did you just step into my office to annoy me?”

Mack sighed and dropped his hands. She had that “go away” look on her face that he remembered so well. He knew that if he pushed her now, she’d close down and clam up and she’d never trust him with the truth.

Molly had her own fair share of stubborn.

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