Amazing, that a fight with a woman who didn’t mean a thing to you anymore could be so upsetting.
Holly’s rage had caught him off guard. He could hardly recall her so much as raising her voice, during their marriage. They’d never quarrelled, not even at the end. Sometimes, when he’d found her looking at him with that hurt-little-girl expression, he’d had all he could do to keep from demanding that she tell him what was wrong. He could have dealt with that, with some yelling and anger, even with some flying crockery.
But there’d been none of that. Holly’s silence had damn near killed him. That, and the pained look in her eyes.
‘What do you want from me?’ he’d said to her once. Okay. He hadn’t said it, he’d shouted it.
‘If you don’t know,’ she’d said in a broken whisper, ‘I can’t tell you.’
That was the night he’d finally admitted defeat. He’d packed his things and moved out, and the lawyers had taken it from there. He’d never set eyes on his wife again.
His ex-wife. How come he kept forgetting that?
Now it turned out that Holly had just been waiting for the chance to tell him off. And tell him off she had. The clipped words. The flashing eyes. The regal posture, when she’d walked away.
Holly had changed, all right. Changed a lot.
The Holly he’d married had been a girl who’d spent her life in a world of fairy-tale privilege. And he’d taken her away from all that. Holly the Princess had tied on an apron and become Holly the Housewife.
At first, he’d thought it was sweet. After a while, he’d realized there was nothing sweet about watching his beautiful wife transformed into a drudge, and knowing he was the cause.
She’d baked. She’d cooked. She’d made curtains for their hovel of an apartment. Curtains, by God, when she’d probably never so much as sewn a button on a blouse in her entire life. And the way she’d stood at the door each night, those first few months, breaking into a big smile as he came in filthy and tired and irritable from a day spent building houses for rich people who’d never done a thing in their lives to deserve them, lifting her face for his kiss as if he weren’t dirty, and smelly, and her old man’s worst dream come true…
Not that her housewife act had lasted. Just about the time he’d finally gotten a handle on how to go from wielding a hammer for the rest of his life to finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, Holly had come to her senses. Instead of smiling when he came in at night, she’d sulked. No. That was the wrong word. She hadn’t sulked. She’d seemed…hurt. As if he’d somehow let her down when, dammit, what he’d been doing was working his ass off to give her the life she deserved.
Holly the Princess had become Holly the Silent.
It was anybody’s guess who she was now, and none of his business.
Nick sat up, pummelled the pillow a little, jammed it behind his head and lay down again. He turned on his right side, turned on his left…
And rolled right off the sofa, in a tangle of blankets.
‘That’s it,’ he snarled. He shot to his feet and began pacing.
Sleep was not a possibility. He had to do something or go crazy, but what could you do in a cabin without electricity in the middle of the freaking night, with the temperature someplace around zero and your ex in the bed upstairs…?
Bloody damn!
He came to an abrupt halt. He’d been so busy counting his own miseries that he’d forgotten that Holly had to be freezing, the same as he was. Worse, probably. She’d given him half her supply of blankets. And she’d never dealt well with the cold. He used to tease her about it, when she’d curl up against him at night, those first months of their marriage, with her hand spread across his chest and her thigh over his.
‘I don’t know what I’m gonna do with you, baby,’ he’d say, as he drew her to him, and she’d give a sexy little laugh and say that if he couldn’t think of something she certainly could…
‘Stop it, Brennan,’ Nick growled. What was he trying to do? Drive himself crazier than he already was?
To have come to this cabin in the first place was crazy. To find your ex-wife inside and come back after she all but tossed you out was certifiably loony. Forget the snow. He’d have been better off taking his chances with the road. It couldn’t be any more dangerous than where his thoughts were heading but it was only logical to think about waking Holly and suggesting they share the blankets.
Oh, yeah. That was just what he needed, all right. Snuggling down under the blankets with Holly was definitely the way to go.
Nick sighed. He was losing it. What he needed was to do something constructive. Like build a fire in the fireplace, to throw some warmth into the room.