Seduction comes as naturally to him as breathing. I should have figured that one out, too.
“I can live with to be determined.” His lips slide into a lazy smile. “Come on. Let’s get you home before you turn into a pumpkin.”
“You should come with me.”
Surprise crosses his face before he can hide it, and I like the little leap of power in my belly. He shocks me on a minute-to-minute basis, but I’m probably correct in my suspicion that he knows every move I’m going to make eons before I do.
“To your parents’ house?”
“You already know my mother,” I point out. “It’s Thanksgiving and I could really use the moral support, pal.”
His amber eyes, once so predictable and now not so predictable at all, flash at the word “pal.”
He groans. “Moral support, huh?”
I want him to come. I need him to come.
“Holden, please.”
He softens. “Are you sure they won’t mind?”
“They won’t.” I think about stopping there, but I can’t resist the tease. It’s too much fun. “Unless you’re one of the dimwits. My mother used to say that 95% of her students were dimwits, and since you were her student...”
“I’m not a dimwit and Caroline has never said that word in her life. You’re a little liar. Get your bag. You’re going home and I’m coming with you.”
Just before we reach the car, I place my hand over his. “Thanks.”
He smiles, and the brilliant light of it, and of him, warms my skin. “You’re welcome.”
G
ranger Manor sneaks up on us. It’s a long drive from the main road to the house, at least a mile or two, and most of it is through a dense forest. Before I’m ready, the trees clear and the house appears, as beautiful and imposing as ever.
My father wanted to sell it, and strangely enough, I was the one who refused. It’s fraught with terrible memories, landmines of pain and regret, but it’s filled with all of the good ones, too. Even though it’s been more than three years since I’ve seen my childhood home, each piece of stone, each enormous column, is imprinted on my memory. I know which couch to lift to find the tiny burn hole that appeared after one of Jack’s parties. I know which drawers squeak. I know that behind the Britney Spears poster in my old bedroom, there’s still evidence of the time I got slightly overeager with my box of 164 new crayons. I probably should have chosen more wisely in my attempt to camouflage the damage, but I was going through a pop phase, one that I may or may not have recovered from.
When we reach the final pair of gates, Holden reaches over to brush a wayward piece of hair from my face. “Are you sure you can do this?”
“Yes.”
I have to do this.
He nods once as he pulls the car into the family lot, the one at the top of the hill. When I try to slide myself from the cool leather seat, but my body feels like it’s made of lead, and I remain stuck in neutral, unable to take a step in one direction or the other. After he opens my door, Holden places a reassuring hand in mine and the atoms readjust, allowing me to take a step towards the place that I once thought I’d never see again.
“I haven’t been here since...” Unable to finish the thought, I glance at Holden.
“Again, Stella, are you sure?”
“Yes.”
If I can’t do it, we can go back to the bungalow. I can start working on falling in love with him. I managed the crush perfectly fine. Piece of cake.
It’s not going to work, Stella.
“Will you stop saying that?”
Holden gives me a quizzical look. Before he can ask what I mean, a woman with long, blond hair flies into my arms.
“Stella, baby,” she croons.
“Hi, Mom,” I whisper.
Finally, when she’s had her fill of hugging, she pulls back and drinks me in. Guilt stabs at my gut, but I don’t flinch. She’s hesitant at first, but the relief creeps slowly into her face until she’s filled with it. I’m absurdly pleased with myself. I’ve finally done one thing right.
“Thank the lord,” she whispers. “You finally ditched the punk rock stripper look.”
I laugh. “I did. Izzy actually threw a party for it. A good riddance party.”
“I hope she burned all of those clothes you bought.”
“Yep. Goodwill didn’t want any of them.”
My mother releases peals of girlish laughter. I haven’t heard her laugh in years, but it’s still inconceivable how I could have forgotten the sound of it—reckless and giddy and completely at odds with her elegant attire and status as the most important mind in the field of psychology. At least, I think that’s how Holden put it.
I turn my head automatically to grin at him. My mother’s gaze follows my own.
Just as abruptly as it began, her laughter dies.
Her eyes are fixed on Holden, her expression fierce and hopeful and heartbroken. I have the sudden urge to protect her from more pain. I turn to him, to tell him to leave, to ask why he hadn’t told me that his relationship with my mother was so strained, but all at once, I understand.
She mistook him for Jack. For a second, her heart allowed her to believe that both of her children had returned to her, but the cruel reality set in all too quickly.
I smooth her hair, touching it just as she just touched mine, comforting her as if she were the child and I were the mother. She grips my arm tightly before turning to him and opening her arms.
“Holden,” she murmurs. “I have no idea why or how you’re here, but I am sure glad to see you.”
I plead with Holden, silently.
Please don’t hurt her.
I needn’t have bothered. He understands grief. He puts his arms around her and embraces her tightly.
“I’ve missed you, Caroline.”
She blinks the tears out of her eyes and slings one arm around his waist and the other around mine. As she leads us towards the house, I try to protest.
“Mom, I need to get my stuff.”
“There’s time for that later,” she declares, brushing my concern away. “I need to play catch up with my favorite daughter and my favorite former student.”
Holden turns wide, innocent eyes on her. “Your favorite former student? It seems like you’ve changed your tune, Caroline. If I remember correctly, David was the golden child and I was the screw up. ‘Get your act together, Holden. You’re wasting the most precious gift of all, your brain.’”
He does a perfect imitation of my mother’s sternest voice. She’s not going to like that. While she’s a champion at dishing it out, she’s never been a very good recipient of teasing.
She merely chuckles. Clearly, I’m not the only Granger who isn’t immune to his considerable charms.
“David was an idiot. And you’ve never made a bad choice in your life. You’ve certainly never screwed anything up, to use your colloquialism.” She turns to me then, her eyes wicked. “Half of the department was in love with him, and the other half was in lust. I may have been a bit too harsh, but it was all for his own good. Holden was a miniature Lothario with a bigger ego. I was attempting to ensure that his head wouldn’t grow too large to fit through my office door.”
“Unfortunately, you were too late,” he says lightly.
I give my mother a sideways look. While the little incident in the bungalow might have proven that he is perfectly aware of his power over the female population, Holden is the last person in the world who is in danger of an overinflated ego. It isn’t fair of her to tease him like that, not when she really should know better.
Her impish smile betrays her. She’s making trouble again. Beneath that elegant veneer, there’s a world-class mischief-maker. Her eyes dance between Holden and me, and because I know what’s coming, I let out a low groan.
“How do you know my daughter, Holden?” she asks. “If I remember correctly, you turned down every single one of my invitations to come to dinner, so I know I couldn’t have introduced you.”
I’m glad he’s the one who has to deal with that question. I push open the front door, and my heart beats a little faster. Home.
Holden lets out a long whistle when he sees the enormous chandelier in the foyer. “If I had known where dinner was going to be held, I might have reconsidered.”
My mother swats his wrist. “Really, though. Answer the question. You can understand my natural curiosity, since it’s a trait we share. You see, Stella’s never brought a man home before. I hardly expected the first one to be you.”
She ignores my grunt of protest and keeps her attention focused on Holden.
His answer is easy. “It’s a small world. Stella was in my introduction to psychology class at Greenview.”
She’s going to have a field day with that one.
“Please tell me you didn’t stoop so low. Psychology 101? No. I raised you better than that.”
Her response is far more subdued than I expected.
“It’s a long story.” One that I don’t want to tell. “To respond to your unspoken question, mother dear, Holden is a friend, not a man.”
“To be determined,” Holden mouths.
My mother misses nothing, and Holden’s not-so-stealthy mouthing is no exception. Evidently, I’m not the only one who needs to work on nonverbal communication skills.
“Interesting,” she says, tapping her finger against my arm. “Care to elaborate on that, dearest daughter of mine?”
“A friend,” I repeat, my voice firm. “We were on the same plane from Atlanta, and I figured a Thanksgiving invitation was a fair reward for saving me from a fate worse than death.”
“And what was that, exactly?” My mother’s face is impassive, but I know her too well to completely ignore the little flash of amusement that perfectly matches Holden’s normal countenance.
“The instructor for my lab section was completely unsuitable. There was a bit of a misunderstanding, and Holden was able to sort it all out.”
Her eyebrows quirk. “Unsuitable?”
Unsuitable is the kindest word I could possibly use. The instructor for my lab section was a devil. A sick, twisted, evil, callous, cruel, son of a bitch devil with beautiful eyes and a wicked mouth and lots of other attributes that I really don’t want to think about right now.
Holden interrupts. “Actually, Caroline...”
I silence him with a look. I’m sure he’s figured out that Luke is the root of our “to be determined” status, since nothing seems to escape that all-seeing gaze of his. My mother doesn’t need to know anything besides the fact that Holden was the one who saved me from a nameless idiot of a TA. I know the depth of her love for Luke, the depth of her gratitude for the fact that he saved my life, and I can’t bear for her to lose another son. I want to curl into her arms and tell her everything...well, almost everything, but I won’t do it. I won’t, and I can’t. So, I tell a white lie.
“The instructor was a fool. I don’t think he was qualified to take Psychology 101, let alone teach it. I couldn’t just sit in that lab section and watch impressionable freshmen try to learn incorrect information, so I planned on embarrassing him by pointing out all of his inadequacies. But my conscience got the better of me, and I tried to drop the class, and then that caused a bureaucratic nightmare, and Holden saved my skin with an independent study.”
My mother doesn’t believe a word of it. I pulled out all the stops. It’s like she already knows...
“Would you be referring to me, Stella?”
Sweet mother of god. He has got to be kidding me. I shut my eyes. Five seconds.
“Inadequacies? Do tell. I’m intrigued,” Luke continues, his voice mocking and cruel.
The flickers of heat snaking through my belly inform me that his unnatural ice blue eyes are trained directly on me. I will not look at him. I will not look at him.
But I really, really, really want to.
So, I do the responsible, grown adult thing, and beg my mother for help. “Mom.”
“Luke, dear, don’t tease Stella.”
He snorts. I groan. I should have known better than to look to her.
Then, Holden comes to my rescue by wrapping a protective arm around my waist and drawing me closer to him. He presses his lips to my temple with such tenderness that it makes me want to cry. I beg for my insides to tremble. I wait for some sign of impending fireworks. I want, I pray, I need the fire to start dancing in my gut.
There’s nothing but a steady, warm gratitude which is almost assuredly springing from platonic affection. Damn it.
My mother’s face tells me that she thinks that Holden’s little stunt was very, very interesting.
I swivel to Luke, and although I try to keep my voice even, the snarling accusation is as clear as day. “What are you doing here?”
My mother steps in. Of course she would come to
his
rescue. “Luke showed up last night, which was a lovely surprise. He told me about seeing you at Greenview, even though I had to beat it out of him. I don’t recall hearing anything about his unsuitability as an instructor, although I’d be very interested in learning more.”
The snake. He wanted to torture me. He could have no other reason for being here.
I keep my mouth shut, and as soon as my mother realizes that I’m not going to provide any more details about Luke’s inadequacies, she changes tactics.
“I assume everyone knows each other?” she asks.
Holden extends one hand to Luke and keeps the other firmly planted on my back. “It’s good to see you.”
“Holden.”
I think it’s too much for me to hope that the arm around my waist is the source of Luke’s curt greeting. The inadequacies comment is a far more likely culprit, but I’m still looking at my shoes, so there’s no way for me to tell for sure.
Under the guise of picking a piece of lint from my dress, my mother brushes her lips to my ear in a whisper only I can hear. “I wish you had told me.”
She’s still sparkling with mischief, and I really can’t take this anymore. I beg for mercy, even though it’s probably useless—she’s never taken pity on my in her life.
“Luke, Holden, I could use a little help with dinner. Stella, your father wanted to give us a little space, but I know he’s desperate for the sight of your face. He should be in the library. Come to the dining room when you’re all finished up, and I’ll make sure I have dinner on the table.”
I guess there’s a first time for everything. I shoot her a grateful look, which she dismisses with a turn of her head.