‘My point,’ Holly said bitterly ‘is that I lied to myself all these years and never realized it until this minute.’
‘Well, you’re realizing wrong. We didn’t fight. Never.’
‘You’re the one who’s wrong, Nick. We fought. I did, anyway. It’s just that I never let the anger out. I kept it all bottled up because I was this—this good little girl who wanted to please you. To make you look at me the way you… Oh, this is stupid! It doesn’t matter anymore. The past is dead, and our disaster of a marriage with it.’ She turned away, her back rigid. ‘And I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am for that!’
‘Holly, wait a minute—’
‘Goodnight, Nick. If we’re lucky, and they plow the road during the night, please have the decency to be gone before I get up.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Actually, if you really had any decency at all, you’d—you’d take those blankets and that pillow and make your bed in a snowbank!’ She stormed up the stairs and slammed the bedroom door behind her.
Nick stood there for a long minute, staring blindly at the empty hall and the closed door. Then, very slowly, he made his way to the sofa, sat down, and buried his head in his hands.
CHAPTER FIVE
MAN, it was cold!
And late, too. At least three or four in the morning, Nick figured. No question but that he had to have been tossing and turning for hours, ever since Holly had stormed out of the room.
He lifted his arm and peered at the lighted dial of his wristwatch.
Midnight? It was only midnight?
Nick groaned and fell back against the pillow, except the pillow wasn’t there. The arm rest was, and he managed to connect it perfectly with the bump on his head. He winced, mouthed an oath, and rubbed his skull with the tips of his fingers.
‘Great,’ he muttered. ‘Just great.’
What a night this had turned out to be! The laugh of it was that he’d come to North Mountain for a break. Considering how things were going, he’d have found more relaxation if he’d decided to camp out in the middle of Times Square.
And the weekend was only just beginning.
Nick rolled over, picked up the pillow and punched it into shape.
The room lay in total darkness. Not a good sign, he thought sourly. If the clouds had rolled in again, if it snowed…who knew when the road would get plowed? With his luck, he might be marooned here until New Year’s.
The thought made him shudder.
No way.
‘No way at all,’ he said, as he flipped onto his back, folded his arms over his chest and glowered at the ceiling.
Plow or no plow, he was getting out of here at sunup. Holly could keep the cabin and her distorted memories of their marriage all to herself. The way she’d talked, anybody would think he’d been the one who’d screwed up their relationship.
‘And it wasn’t,’ he growled into the silence. ‘She knows damn well it wasn’t!’
When he’d married Holly, she’d been everything he’d wanted, every dream he’d ever dreamed. She was beautiful. Bright. Kind. Caring. He’d wanted to put down roots, build a marriage, a family, a life they’d both be proud of.
What he hadn’t figured was that she’d only wanted to play at being married. Either she still hadn’t realized it or she wouldn’t admit it, even now. All the self-righteous accusations she’d hurled at him tonight, accusing him of fighting with her and then turning her back on him before he’d had a chance to respond…
Damn, but she’d made him angry!
Angry, hell. He’d been furious. After she’d slammed the bedroom door, he’d paced the living room, muttering to himself, until, finally, he’d run out of steam, peeled down to his shorts and climbed under the blankets on the sofa.
Sofa? Nick grimaced. This wasn’t a sofa. It was a slab of concrete, with an occasional steel bar built in for effect. Only an Indian fakir would call it suitable for a night’s sleep. It was short and too narrow. His feet dangled over the arm and hung out from under the blankets. And every time he rolled over he risked getting dumped onto the floor.
To top it all, he was freezing. He felt as if he’d curled up on a shelf in a walk-in freezer for the night.
What he needed were his thermals, his wool shirts, sweats and heavy socks, all the stuff still packed in his carry-on, which he’d thoughtlessly left upstairs.
‘Another brilliant move in a night of brilliant moves, Brennan,’ he muttered in disgust, and dragged the blankets up over his shoulders—a truly brilliant idea, since all he accomplished was to leave his shins hanging out in the cold.
Nick sighed.