Five's A Crowd (5 page)

“Holden…” she said warningly, then let her voice trail off as he bent forward and pressed his lips
against the side of her throat, using more finesse than Love Buns, but feeling all the swift sexual passion of any hormonally charged teenage boy.

“Hm…?” he answered, sliding his hands down her arms to her elbows and then splaying them against her flat stomach. He would have said more, said something low and hopefully sexy, but he was having considerable difficulty in swallowing. And thinking.

“We can’t do this,” Taylor told him, although he was still clearheaded enough to know that she might be protesting, but she wasn’t moving. In fact, she was melting against him. “You’re my employer.”

“Sid hired you, not me.”

“You know what I mean,” she persisted even as he blazed a trail from the tender skin beneath her ear all the way to the collar of her soft cotton shirt. Her breath became audible as she blew it out in a long, ragged sigh that did wonders for his ego.

When she spoke again, it was rapidly, as if she was trying to say the words as quickly as she could, while they both still believed them. “I’m your therapist. You’re my client. We have a strictly professional relationship that can’t be forgotten just because we have this…this mutual physical attraction. There’s…there’s ethics…and there’s…there’s…oh, the
hell
with it!”

She turned in his arms and grabbed his face between her hands, yanking his head down so that his mouth crashed against hers.

He needed no further encouragement, pulling her hard against the length of his body as her fingers tangled in his hair, urging her lips open so that he could deepen their kiss. He felt like an animal, like they were both animals, set to devour each other to satisfy appetites too long denied.

His hands stroked the length of her back, cupped her buttocks as he pulled her even closer, then eased her slightly away from him, their mouths still locked together as he bent forward slightly so his hands could skim the flatness of her stomach, cup the fullness of her breasts—all as her hands were working on the front button of his shorts and as he began maneuvering her toward the bed.

“Holden! Who
is
that woman?”

Holden froze in the act of unbuttoning the top button of Taylor’s shirt, his eyes popping open at the sound of a very distinctive, husky female voice. “Somebody has put a curse on me,” he mumbled in disbelief, his lips still mostly clinging to Taylor’s.

He put his hands on Taylor’s shoulders and disengaged himself reluctantly—oh, so reluctantly—then carefully placed her behind him protectively as he turned to smile at the latest in a long line of beautiful, supposedly disposable women who stood just inside the door that should have been closed.

“Why, hello, Amanda. What brings you to Ocean City?” he asked brightly, knowing he was a dead man.

I
T HAD BEEN OVER
two hours since Amanda Price had made her entrance. Taylor had spent the time sitting on a towel she’d laid on the nearly deserted beach, silently calling herself every kind of fool she could imagine and then some she couldn’t.

How could she have been so stupid? So
irresponsible?
So horribly unprofessional?

Why had she gone to the man’s room in the first place, knowing how attracted she was to him?

How could she have allowed him to tear down all the barriers she had been carefully building against him these past two weeks?

How could she have been so careless as to
not
close the door behind her!

No. No, she’d skip that last part. She couldn’t think like that. It was
good
that she had left the door open. Good. Fortunate. Lucky, even. Why, she should consider Amanda’s interruption to have saved her from making the second biggest mistake in her life—Geoff, the playboy golf pro, having been the first four years ago. She certainly didn’t need to have her second love affair be with Holden, the playboy quarterback. Some lessons shouldn’t have to be learned twice!

However, if Amanda Price hadn’t come along, then surely Thelma would have, or Woody. That would have been a lot worse than having supermodel Amanda Price and her expensive clothes, beautiful yet strangely expressionless face and choking perfume
stumble over her and Holden as they were about to do something she’d simply rather not think about right now.

“She’s gone finally, back to her hotel,” Holden said from above and behind her, then sat down beside her on the sand, his long, bare legs stretched out in front of him. He had the straightest legs she’d ever seen, tanned now, and covered with rapidly blonding hair, even though the hair on his head was dark as night.

How she longed to touch him!

Taylor closed her eyes. “What did you say to her?” she asked, not really wanting to know. After all, the woman had ignored her as if she didn’t exist, walking into Holden’s bedroom and draping herself over his arm, telling him he had been a naughty boy to have gone off without telling her where she could find him when she got back from her swimwear shoot in the Virgin Islands.

Lucky for her, the model had gone on saying, there had been a small item in the New York papers this morning, saying that Woody and Tiffany LeGrand, children of Peter LeGrand, had been seen cavorting on the beaches in Ocean City, New Jersey, of all places.

“You’d said something to me about Woody spending the summer with you when you turned down my invitation to Rome. So I took a chance and called out to California, and the housekeeper gave me

this address,” she’d explained as she dragged Holden through the kitchen and down the steps to the upper living room, away from Taylor. “Aren’t you proud of me, Holden? I’m a budding detective! Now, tell me all about your arm. Is it true that you need major surgery on something called your rotator cuff—and that your career may be over?”

“I guess I hadn’t realized the rumors had gotten so bad, so blown out of proportion,” Taylor said now, pushing her bare toes into the cooling sand, wondering just how long it would take to dig herself a hole deep enough to bury herself in. Or was she the only one who remembered what had almost happened in Holden’s bedroom? Besides, if he dared to try apologizing for having kissed her, she’d have to slug him. It was better to talk about Amanda and the press, and leave the subject of that fairly explosive interlude to die a natural death. “Did you convince Amanda that you don’t need surgery?”

“I did.”

She laid her elbows on her bent knees and stared out at the ocean as sea gulls laughed overhead, mocking her nervousness. “And did you tell her you’re just fine, that your career isn’t in jeopardy?”

“That, too.”

Why was he talking to her in shorthand—barely getting out more than two words at a time? Something else was wrong. She was sure of it.

Taylor turned her head, rested her chin against her upper arm and looked at Holden out of the corner of her eye. Oh, yeah. Something else was wrong, all right. That tic was working in his left cheek again.

“What else did you tell her?” she asked, feeling an apprehensive knot beginning to tighten in her stomach. “I mean, how did you explain me? Explain, um, what we were doing?”

“Oh, that was simple enough,” he said, still speaking in a monotone and still not looking at her. “I told her we’d just gotten engaged.”

“E
XCUSE ME
? I
COULDNT
have heard that right. You told her
what?”

Holden grinned, having already figured that it wouldn’t take long for Taylor to respond to his last statement. And she hadn’t immediately smacked him one across the face and stomped back to the condo to pack her bags. He had to consider that a plus. “I told her she caught us celebrating our engagement. Don’t look at me like that—it was the only thing I could think of on such short notice. After all, she did find us in a rather, um,
compromising
position, so I had to protect you.”

“Rather compromising? Holden, don’t pretty it up on my account. I know what we were doing. We were about to go at each other like crazed rabbits. And you had to protect me? Well, isn’t that so wonderfully old-world of you. Who said chivalry was dead? They certainly haven’t met Holden Masters, have they?”

She was onto him. Well, he’d always known she wasn’t stupid. “All right, all right,” he confessed quickly, “so I was also thinking of what Amanda might babble to the press about why you’re here. I
admit it. Amanda is a lot of things—one of them isn’t smart, if you were wondering—but she knows a million people and has a remarkably big mouth. But I
was
worried about your reputation. That was the first thing I thought of, honest.” He tried for a smile as he pretended to ward off a physical attack. “You can thank me any way you wish.”

“Really? Okay. How about with a hot poker down your shorts?” Taylor suggested, leaping to her feet in one fluid, graceful motion and setting off down the beach.

Holden watched in admiration for a few moments, then went after her because he really did like her. He really did care what she thought about him. And he really, really wanted to explore that “crazed rabbit” attraction Amanda had so rudely interrupted.

“Look, Taylor, it’s no big deal. I already called Sid in Maui, and he’s going to fax some trumped-up story out to the media. Holden Masters, siblings in tow, is vacationing at an undisclosed New Jersey resort with his loving fiancée. I’m protected from any more rumors on my physical condition. You’re protected from Amanda’s flapping tongue. It’ll all blow over in a couple of days. All right, maybe in a couple of weeks. By the time I sign my new contract tops.”

“And, as an added bonus, you get rid of Amanda the Beautiful just as her customary six months are up. You forgot to mention that,” Taylor added sarcastically,
making him wince as her verbal arrow struck home. “So I guess—as we’re doing time lines here—this also means our bogus engagement will be history by, oh, Christmas? At least I have
something
to look forward to, I suppose. I wonder if my parents will be equally as thrilled?”

“Your parents?” Holden winced again. “I hadn’t thought about your parents, Taylor. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she responded, still walking and with enough built-up energy radiating from her tall, slim body that she probably could make it all the way up the coast to Atlantic City without breathing hard. “I’ll call them later and explain everything, listen to yet another lecture on why I should never have left Allentown for a return to the big city of Manhattan and then promise to call them next week. What about your mother?”

“Miranda?” Holden hadn’t given his mother’s reaction a second thought—even a first one. “I don’t know. She’ll probably beg me not to make her a grandmother yet, then send us something from Bloomingdale’s. You like ostentatious crystal bowls?”

“Don’t pretend to be dense, Holden. It doesn’t become you.”

He reached out and took her hand, pulling her to a stop at the water’s edge, as she had made a sharp right turn as if intending to walk into the ocean and swim to England. “Look, Taylor,” he said seriously,
swinging her around to face him, “I don’t like this any better than you do. But it was all I could think of, honestly. I only think fast on my feet when a three-hundred-and-fifty-pound defensive end is bearing down on me.”

“Oh, sure, expect me to believe that. I’m not Amanda Price, remember,” Taylor countered, pulling her hand free of his. “You graduated top of your class in media communications, bucko, so don’t act like you can’t add two and two.”

Holden grinned. “Did your research on me, huh? I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be,” she said, picking up a clamshell and sending it out over the breaking waves before turning away from the water. “So—how long do we have until ‘The Nose’ finds us?”

“Then you’re going to go along with it?” Holden asked in impossible-to-hide relief, following her again and feeling like a puppy who’d messed the new carpet and was now trying to make up for his mistake by being extremely lovable. “Sid did say it was the perfect press release to get me back in the news in a favorable light, get me out of this stupid role of secrecy he put me into and still keep the negotiations on the front burner. So it’s working out all around. I get my therapy, you get a small vacation—because I am getting much better, don’t you think?—and everything ends happily. I can’t thank you enough, Taylor. Honestly.”

“First Tiffany, and now you and Uncle Sid,” Taylor said, finally smiling, so that he could begin to relax. “By the time this summer is over, you’re all going to owe me a small fortune in favors.”

T
HEY OWED HER
a small fortune in favors before supper that night as it turned out, simply because she didn’t kill Holden Masters, star quarterback, loving brother and chivalrous idiot extraordinaire.

Because, when Taylor and Holden finally left the beach and turned the corner at the end of the row of beachfront condos, it was to see two huge news vans parked outside the lime stucco building and the pavement littered with miles of electrical wire, cameras and a half-dozen television newsmen and print reporters.

Above them, a red-faced Thelma Helper danced around on the upper living-room deck, waving a broom in the air as she yelled at them all to go away before she poured boiling water on them, the way she would drown ants.

“That agent of mine is too much. He must have gotten on the wire the minute the two of us hung up,” Holden complained, squeezing Taylor’s hand as she slipped it into his, probably not realizing what she was doing—not that he minded. “Just smile pretty and let me do the talking, all right?”

“I already tried that once today, Holden, and ended up engaged to you,” she reminded him sharply.
“Much more talking on your end and I’ll find myself the clandestine mother of triplets. Please, forgive me if I’m lacking some confidence in my bigmouthed fiancé right now.”

“Good point. Triplets, huh? That’s too much, even for me. Okay, what else do you suggest? We camp out on the beach all night, hoping they give up and go away? They won’t, you know, and the sand flies can get pretty hungry after dark.”

Anything Taylor might have suggested meant nothing as one of the reporters shouted out, “There they are!” and Holden gave her hand another squeeze before leading her across the street and straight into contact with the wing-flapping media vultures.

“This the lucky lady, Holden?”

“Where did you meet?”

“What happened to the mustache? You
were
hiding, weren’t you?”

“Tell me about the accident, Holden. Is it true you were drunk?”

“Turn this way, Ms. Angel.”

“Over here, Taylor, baby. Give us a big smile for the camera!”

“Should I call the police, Mr. Masters? Maybe they’ll hit ‘em all with billy clubs or something. I’d give up my soap to watch that!”

Holden held up a hand, asking everyone to be silent for a moment as he had an announcement. “Those cameras on?” he asked, wishing Thelma,
who was now shouting 911 at the top of her lungs, would just shut up and go back inside the condo.

“Now,” he said, smiling as the reporters stepped back a pace, acting only slightly less like piranhas than they had a moment earlier. A boom mike almost got away from one of the technicians, nearly taking off the top of Holden’s head. Finally, order was restored—sort of.

“You’ve got me, guys, so I might as well talk, huh? Here it is, the whole truth. I’m fine. My shoulder is fine—I was dented a little in the accident, but the Ferrari got the worst of it. I’m just a man in love, that’s all. Taylor and I tried to get away from the limelight for a little while—get to know each other better—but as long as you’re here, I’m happy to announce that, yes, Taylor and I are engaged to be married. We—”

“Nancy Marsh here, local stringer for AP. These guys can talk all the football they want later. Let’s just cut to the chase now, okay? That her real name, Holden?
Angel?
Yeah, like anyone’s gonna believe that one! Who is she, really? Where did you two meet? What does she do? And what about Amanda Price? She’s registered at the Regency right down the street, you know. Isn’t that just a little too
cozy?”

Holden looked at the ambitious woman who had rattled off this list of questions, smiling even as he wondered who in hell she was. “Amanda Price has always been a good friend,” he said evenly.

“Uh-huh, sure, feed me that same tired line. I’ll bite,” the reporter answered archly, scribbling on a steno pad. “Now, Ms. Angel—how do you feel about Holden’s good friend Amanda?”

“Well, for one, Nancy, I think she’s much more well-mannered than you,” Taylor responded, smiling directly into one of the television cameras.

“Easy, Taylor,” Holden whispered. “Not nice to poke sticks in reporters’ cages. Even the baby ones have big teeth.”

“Maybe it’s not,” Taylor answered, also in a whisper, and also while still smiling, “but it’s fun. What’s she going to do, tell her readers I said she was rude?”

“You’ll wish that was all she writes,” he said against Taylor’s ear, hearing the click of the cameras as the photographers snapped pictures of the two lovebirds as if they were whispering sweet nothings to each other. “All right, guys,” he said then, as the questions started all over again, “if you want anything else, you’ll have to go through Sid. He knows everything. For now, how about you give us a little break and a little privacy?”

Just as Holden was guiding Taylor past the line of cameras, thinking they had come away from their first confrontation with the press relatively unscathed, a car pulled to a screeching halt at the curb and Rich “The Nose” Newsome hopped out, as welcome as a plague in May—or any other time.

“So what did you do, Rich?” Holden asked, looking at his longtime nemesis, the sports columnist who had taken an instant dislike to Holden—why, he’d never know—the minute he’d signed with the Philadelphia team eleven years ago. “Rent a helicopter?”

“Ha-ha, Masters. You’re a funny man,” New-some responded nastily, bounding over the curb and across the grass to stick a miniature tape recorder right up under Holden’s nose. “Before you go scurrying back to your love nest, how about you explain why Ms. Taylor Angel is listed in the New York City telephone directory as a professional masseuse?”

“Who
is
this guy?” Taylor snapped, and Holden felt the first small ground-shakings of rapidly impending doom. “Look, buddy,” she said before he could stop her, pointing a finger at Rich Newsome, “that’s licensed physical therapist and licensed massage therapist, and that’s what it says both in the Manhattan phone book and on my licenses. Get your facts straight, okay?”

“Massage therapist, huh?” Newsome countered, his grin so oily Holden was surprised it didn’t slide right off his face. “From Manhattan, too, just where I found your name when I did a little quick research. So, tell me again, off the record, of course—what block of Forty-second Street do you work on, honey? I might want you to run those pretty hands over me someday. How much? Fifty bucks cover an hour alone with the lovely Ms. Angel?”

T
AYLOR KEPT MASSAGING
Holden’s right hand, gently pulling on his fingers one at a time, working the soreness out of his knuckles. “You shouldn’t have hit him, you know. That was really dumb, dumber than my dig at that Nancy woman. And it was all my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten angry in the first place. After all, I’m used to snide remarks from jerks when my profession is mentioned.”

Holden pulled his hand away from hers and fell back against the couch, looking so sweet and vulnerable that she longed to kiss him. Which was a dangerously stupid reaction. “He as good as called you some sort of hooker, Taylor. And not even a high-priced one. What did you expect me to do—give him a cookie?”

She reached up to begin working out the knots in his right shoulder, although he hadn’t complained about any soreness. She just knew his body now, knew it probably better than he did himself, and although he’ had delivered a remarkably fine right across to Rich “The Nose” Newsome’s kisser, his arm still wasn’t in any shape for such heroic displays. “It’s too late for a cookie. Although you might want to send him a three-pound, raw porterhouse steak. His eye was already beginning to swell up before he hit the pavement.”

Holden closed his eyes and chuckled. “He’s been asking for that for years. And every wonderful bit of it got caught on camera. I guess that will put the kibosh
to all that talk about my arm. Sid will be on the phone from Maui pretty soon, screaming that I just threw a million-dollar punch and raking me over the coals for blowing the lid off his little scheme to keep the owners in the dark about what I’m doing.”

“Boy, Masters,” Taylor said, shaking her head, “when you’re wrong, you’re
wrong.
Uncle Sid called while you were in the shower. He says your price just went
up,
and that three other teams have already called, wanting to join the bidding. And there’s more, Holden. Fast on his feet, Uncle Sid is. He also wants you to put your arm in a sling, then blame Newsome for your
new
injury.”

Holden jackknifed to the edge of the couch. “He said
what?
I don’t believe that guy! I’m just lucky if The Nose doesn’t decide to press charges.”

“Don’t worry. I talked uncle Sid out of it. And Newsome isn’t going to press charges. He’s going to crucify you in his column, just like he always does—or so Uncle Sid says. Now,” Taylor said, rising from the couch and walking over to lean her hip against the massage table, “how do we call off this so-called engagement? I mean, we don’t need this charade anymore, do we?”