Bachelor On The Prowl (8 page)

Until Max had gotten wind of what was going on, that is, and just about taken Colin apart. And he’d learned. He learned that an almost perfect “outside” meant nothing, less than nothing, if the “inside” didn’t live up to its “cover.”

So Colin had stopped posing, and started to crack open the books. He still played on his high school baseball and football teams, but he also joined the debate club. He painted scenery for the class play, took guitar lessons with more of an eye to the classical than the
quick chording that wowed the girls as he played and sang vocals with a local rock band.

The high school girls still chased him. And then the college girls chased him. And then women, all sorts of women, from Texas to New York, to Paris, and everywhere in between. Except he didn’t let so many of them “catch” him anymore. He was careful not to take everything that was offered to him, learned to judge others as he wished to be judged.

In short, Colin grew up.

Just to have a major relapse yesterday, with a woman who, he had to admit to himself, just might be the one woman in the world who would actually
dislike
him because his face didn’t scare small children.

No wonder he was intrigued. For all the good it would do him.

He crossed the street and saw the Frick in front of him, a large, imposing building he was amazed he’d never noticed on his earlier trips to Manhattan.

So this was where a Holly Hollis would go when she wanted to be alone? Interesting.

He stepped inside, felt the coolness of being surrounded by very thick walls, aware of entering a sort of haven far removed from the hustle and bus
tl
e of the New York City streets. Paying his entrance fee, he was handed a brochure that included a map of the museum as well as a short history.

Stalling, playing for time, he opened the brochure, and learned that a man by the name of Henry Clay Frick, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania coke and steel industrialist, had ordered the construction of this huge mansion around 1913, for use as a private home. Some private home. A guy could fly a kite right here in the foyer.

Henry had willed the building and his art collection to a trust, and that trust had added considerably to Henry’s already impressive collection, so that now over one thousand, one hundred works of art were on display. A Rembrandt. An El Greco. Some Whistler.

Colin was always impressed to learn that private citizens actually owned great masterpieces, and only loaned them to museums from time to time.

He could imagine—just barely—what it would be like to eat dinner in a dining room overlooked by El Greco’s
Storm Over Toledo,
or some such work of art. It would be kind of difficult to munch hot dogs while in the presence of such a masterpiece. Of course, people who had masterpieces in their dining rooms probably didn’t eat hot dogs anyway.

“You’re stalling when you should be moving, Rafferty,
”
he said out loud, refolding the brochure and stuffing it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. Transferring the green paper-wrapped bouquet to his left hand, he set out in the direction of the large inside courtyard, which rather dominated the area just inside the entrance.

Magnificent. The courtyard was magnificent, all soaring columns and architectural touches that would have turned heads even in Paris.

He’d have to come back here one day, when his mind was ready to concentrate on more than finding Holly, explaining himself to Holly. Groveling to Holly.

And then he saw her.

She was sitting on a stone bench at the far side of the reflecting pool, her back to him as she looked up at
a group of columns with an intensity that made him
wonder if she was thi
nking of climbing one of them.
She looked great. That probably had something to do with the fact that she w
ore Sutherland designs—today,
cocoa-colored, heavy silk slacks and a cream-colored sweater with a soft cowl collar. But mostly she looked great because she seemed so at home in her own skin. She wore her shiny cap of chestnut hair in a style that said, “If you don’t like it, don’t look.” He liked it, and he looked.

Even as her back remained turned to him, he remembered how open and honest her huge green eyes looked as she’d told him bits and snatches of her life. He remembered tha
t
intriguing, slightly pointy chin that she kept lifting, jutting out, daring the world, or him, to say something that needed a rebuttal.

She didn’t pose, or primp, or give any indication that she cared what anyone thought of her. And yet he knew, not just because Max had told him so, that Holly Hollis was not half as brash and secure as she’d like the world to believe.

And he’d hurt her. He hadn’t needed Max nor Julia to tell him that, either. He’d seen the hurt in those huge green eyes as she’d said, “Hi, Harry,” and right before she’d belted him with her purse.

He thought back over their date of the previous evening. What they’d said, what they’d shared. Her honesty, his deception. This wasn’t going to be easy, and he doubted one bouquet of yellow posies was going to cut it, even if coupled with his best “you know you love me” smile.
Especially
if he accompanied the flowers with the smile he’d used to such great effect with
the ladies before he’d learned it wasn’t fair to do that, use
the charm and face he’d been born
with to unfair advantage.

So he stood there, his feet all but nailed to the floor, scared to death of one small woman he probably outweighed by seventy pounds, towered over physically. Scared to approach her, scared to see her look at him, look through him, look at him in disgust for his dishonesty, his deception.

Scared to see the hurt in her eyes again, knowing he was the cause of that hurt.

And then it hit him.
He
knew she’d been hurt.
She
knew she’d been hurt. But it would probably be fatal to act as if he
knew
she was hurt. He had to think about her as being angry—rightfully angry, mad as hell. Because, if she was hurt, that would mean that her emotions were somehow involved, and Holly probably would rather poke a sharp stick in her eye than admit that Harry Hampshire, the louse, had the power to hurt her.

At least that’s what Colin decided, then went with, quickly, before he could go over the thoughts in his head one more time, which probably would just confuse him. Tossing the flowers in a nearby trash can, he strolled to the end of the courtyard and sat down beside Holly. “Hi. Come here often?”

“Go away.”

“No, seriously. Do you come here often? Is this one of the places you’d spend all your time in if you lived in the city? What about Mode
rn
Art? Do you like Modern Art?”

“If you mean, do I like blackened banana skins
stretched out and mount
ed on a wall to represent the
shrinking world and the vagaries of the economy, no,
I
don’t like Mode
rn
Art. There, I’ve answered your question.
Now
go away.”

“Nope,” Colin said, leaning back slightly, wrapping both arms around one raised knee. “First I’m pretty sure I need you to yell at me.”

She turned her head toward him, then faced the pillars once more. “I don’t want to yell at you,” she said, her voice low, for they were, after all, in a museum. “I have absolutely no desire to yell at you.”

“Sure you do,” Colin told her bracingly. “Yell, scream, tell me what a bastard I am, tell me to go to hell. Come on, Holly. I know you’re mad.”

She shifted on the bench, turned her entire upper body toward him. “Look, I’m
not
mad. I’m…
I’m
em
barrassed.
I saw you and I just
assumed
…
and then I all but ripped off your clothes, shoved you out on that runway.”

“I could have stopped you at anytime, you know.”

“Oh, really? And just when would that have been, Harry? While I was ripping open your shirt buttons, or maybe when I was on my knees, untying your shoes, yelling at you to drop your pants?”

“The name’s Colin,” he supplied carefully. He didn’t want her to call him Harry. He wanted her to say his name, remember his name.

That adorable pointy chin went up. “I know that. Colin. Colin Rafferty. Max’s cousin. Do you think that makes this any
better?
”

He grimaced.
“
Makes it even worse, huh? Yes, I suppose it does. I know Max isn’t going to let me forget any of it for a long, long time. How about Julia?”

Holly shook her head. “She’ll never bring it up again. She’ll conveniently forget to show me the video. We’re friends, and Julia never hurts a friend. Neither would Max.”

“So that’s good, right?” Co
li
n persisted. “I get the blame, which I should, and the incident is forgotten. Right after you yell at me, call me names.”

“Look, Har—Colin, I’m
not
going to yell at you. What good would that do? It was my mistake. Sure, you didn’t make any effort to correct my mistake, but that doesn’t mean the whole mess was your fault.”

Colin gave in, tried on one of his best smiles, knowing she’d hate it
…
and went for the gold: “So we’re agreed. I’m pretty much the innocent, injured party here. Basically the whole thing was your fault.”

And we have lift-off
…

Holly leapt to her feet, glared down at him. “My fault?
My
fault? How can you
say
that? What? You have no
mouth?
You couldn’t say, ‘Hey, lady, I’m not a male model, I’m Max’s cousin’? You couldn’t stop me—stop me at any time? You couldn’t
keep your damn pants on?”

“Uh-oh.” Coli
n stood up, watching as, a uniformed guard approached them with a determined look in his eyes. Colin knew he’d finally gotten the reaction he’d wanted from Holly, but maybe he should have waited until they were somewhere other than the very proper Frick to goad her into losing her cool.

He took her arm at the elbow and began maneuvering
her down the stone walkway. “Come on, little miss big mouth, before we’re asked to leave.”

“What?” Holly looked back over her shoulder, saw the guard, who was still moving toward them. “Oh, great. Oh, this is just
great.
It wasn’t enough that you let me make an ass out of myself once—now you’ve gotten me to do it twice. I’ll probably be barred from the museum after this.”

“Yeah, well,” Colin told her, all but frog-marching her at double-time toward the front door, her high heels
click-clicking
on the marble floor. “You know what they always say. See one
Storm Over Toledo
and you’ve seen them all.”

She stopped dead, looked up at him
…
and then began to laugh. Colin would have grabbed her, hugged her, kissed her laughing mouth, but he was beginning to understand the meaning behind that old saying, “There’s a time and place for everything.” Because this wasn’t it.

With the guard still in hot pursuit, Colin and Holly burst through the doorway and back out into the remarkably bright sunlight. Hand in hand, they trotted off down the pavement, not stopping until Holly grabbed at her side, the combination of their fast pace and her nearly uncontrollable giggling giving her the proverbial side-sticker.

“Wait
…
wait,” she begged him, hanging on to his a
rm with both of hers. “You’ll…
you’ll have to leave me behind, go on without me. I’
m just slowing you down. Just…
just be sure you deliver the secret plans to headquarters and
…
and remember me when you look into the eyes of your grandchildren.”

Colin wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, and they both laug
hed until he became uncom
fortably aware of the fact that his body was enjoying this mad little interlude more than he would have expected.

He took hold of her shoulders, pushed her slightly, safely, away from him, smiled down into her face. “Friends again?” he asked as she wiped tears of laughter from her cheeks, her “poor me” mood definitely a thing of the past.

“Maybe.”

Making a quick decision, he took the opportunity to clear up any other misunderstandings they might have, so that they could start off with a clean slate. “So we’re clear here? You know I’m sorry for letting you think I was someone I’m not.”

“I think you’re sorry now, but you weren’t yesterday,” Holly answered, clearly showing him that she knew him a little better than he’d expected, understood him a little more than might be comfortable.

God, she was everything he’d ever wanted, even when he hadn’t known what he wanted. Smart, beautiful, totally unimpressed with his damn pretty face. Mercurial, soft hearted—she had just about dragged him into that restaurant yesterday, to feed him—with a wicked sense of humor.