“Yesterday. I called for my weekly checkup,” she answered promptly. “And they gave me an even more impressive report on you than last week. Keep up the great work, my girl. You’re making the company look good.”
Holly closed her eyes briefly and gave her head a small shake. This didn’t make any sense at all. It seemed they hadn’t tattled that she’d missed two days’ work. That or they hadn’t noticed, which didn’t seem likely . . . unless neither the boss nor his daughter had bothered to show up themselves. But that couldn’t be. Someone had to have been there to answer Gladys’s call and give that stellar report.
“So, what did you call about, Holly?” Gladys asked when she remained silent.
Grimacing, she bit her lip briefly as she tried to come up with an excuse for calling, and then said, “I just wanted to remind you that I can only work part--time again after this week.”
“Oh, yes, your classes start again,” Gladys murmured, the sound of shuffling papers coming through the phone. “Well, that’s okay. I’ll put Nancy on the days you can’t work,” she assured her, and then asked, “You did schedule your classes so you have two days free each week again, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I e--mailed my class hours to Beth on Monday,” Holly assured her and glanced toward the ceiling when James called her name from upstairs.
“Oh, good, good,” Gladys said. “I’ll get them from her and work out how to handle the Sunnyside taxes. In the meantime, I should let you go. You need to leave for work soon, I’d guess.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Holly said good--bye and hung up, then headed upstairs to see what James wanted.
She found him in the bathroom, staring down at the clothes she’d stripped off earlier to take a shower. The black jeans, T--shirt, leather jacket and makeshift bandana all lay in a crumpled pile on the floor. Holly bit her lip, knowing he would want to know whose clothes they were. In his rush to get to work last night he hadn’t seemed to notice the borrowed clothes she was wearing, but he wasn’t in a rush now and there was no mistaking them for anything but a man’s clothes. He would want to know whose they were and how she’d got them.
“Jeez, Holl, you give me hell all the time for leaving my socks laying around instead of putting them in the hamper, and then you go and just leave all of your clothes where you take them off?” he asked with a combination of amusement and irritation. “I saw them there when I came in, but then forgot they were there and tripped on them on the way out of the shower. I could have knocked myself out or something if I’d hit my head on the tub or toilet. As it is I think I wrenched my shoulder catching myself on the counter.”
Holly let her breath out on a slow sigh. He hadn’t noticed they were a man’s clothes. She supposed it was hard to tell from a crumpled heap . . . maybe. Her gaze shifted to his shoulder as he rubbed at it with one hand, his expression pained. James was shirtless, wearing only his pajama bottoms. He had a nice chest, muscular enough to have some definition, but not overly so, and with just the slightest paunch. He was an attractive guy. Always had been. It had always made her wonder if she even would have caught his eye if they hadn’t been thrown together by the lives their parents had led.
Holly’s parents were archaeologists. She’d spent the first eighteen years of her life being dragged from one dig to another. Most of that time she’d lived in tents and had been homeschooled in camp . . . by James’s mother. His father had also been an archaeologist and a lifelong friend to her father. They’d worked together. James’s mother, a teacher before she’d married his father, had traveled with them to look after her and James and had schooled them both. Holly had grown up with James. They’d been each other’s only friends. He’d been her first kiss, her first date, her first everything and she was the same for him. Marriage had been the natural next step and it was going beautifully. They never argued, never disagreed. In fact, this was the closest thing to a fight they’d ever had.
“I’m sorry,” Holly murmured, stepping forward and urging him to turn his back to her. Once he did, she began to massage his shoulder. “How was work?”
“Oh, same old same old,” he muttered as she pressed her thumbs into the knotted muscles. “That feels good. A little gentler though please.”