Harlequin Holiday Collection - Four Classic Seasonal Novellas

robbery.
    “I’m fine,” Holly insisted, just as she had said to the first officer who’d thought she might be in shock.
    She wasn’t. She was shaken up but okay.
    As long as Zach remained by her side, his fingers twined in hers and his arm lying gently across her shoulders, she could handle anything. Absolutely anything.
    She’d been crazy to send him away and just as silly to avoid his calls. Thinking that she could have him for one wild, sensual night and then forget about him forever had been a fool’s plan.
    Holly was no fool. She loved Zach Weldon, she always had. She might have been too young and immature to know what to do about that love eight years ago, but now she was a woman.
    Her grandparents were certainly proof that wonderful relationships could exist in her family. And Holly was not like either of her parents in any other respect—from looks to drive to loyalty. So why on earth should she be like them when it came to emotional commitment?
    Besides, looking back on her relationship with Zach through adult eyes, she knew she had to share some of the blame. Not for doing what she’d thought was right at the time—even if it was a little naïve—but for never confronting Zach, never giving him a chance to explain.
    She’d assumed the worse that night when she’d found him passed out beside his ex. Now, given what she’d come to see of the man over the past few days, she began to wonder if she’d known the real Zach at all. Because a man who’d try so hard to protect her home, who’d risk his life to save hers, was a man with honor. Could he truly have been guilty of what she’d thought he’d done?
    She had to know the truth. Had he betrayed her? Could she forgive him?
    And where did they go from here?

Chapter Nineteen
    By nine o’clock Friday night, Zach and Holly were alone in the living room of the inn. The police were gone, her grandparents in bed. Silence had descended except for Bing Crosby crooning softly in the background.
    They sat on the sofa, close—but not touching and had not spoken a word for several moments. No more talk about the robbers or where the diamonds might have ended up—Santori’s guess was that Leo Meaney had hidden them somewhere before meeting his partner at the tree lot.
    There was no more chatter from Holly’s maid or her grandparents. Just them. Zach and Holly. With no barriers, other than the ones they had erected over the years.
    Zach was going to surmount them no matter what it took.
    “You haven’t been returning my calls,” he murmured, pulling his attention off the flames flickering in the fireplace. Between their glow and the twinkle of lights on the Christmas tree across the room, he could see well enough to notice Holly’s eyes shift, her lashes lowering over them.
    “No, I haven’t.”
    She said nothing else for a second and Zach’s heart stopped. Was she trying to find the words to thank him for his help and then ask him to get out of her life again?
    “I was wrong.”
    His heart resumed beating again and his world started turning again. “I think I understood why you didn’t.”
    “You do?”
    Moving closer, he stretched his long legs out beside hers so that they touched, ever-so-lightly. “You wanted the sex we never had—with no repercussions and none of the heartbreak.”
    She gasped. “How did you…”
    “I did go to school on an academic scholarship,” he said with a laugh. “I’m not stupid. Do you think I don’t know you’ve spent the past eight years thinking I was a cheating dog who couldn’t be trusted?”
    “Not all of the past eight years.”
    “No?”
    She shook her head. “No. I began wondering if I was wrong on Tuesday when you agreed to do whatever you could to help my grandparents save their home.”
    “And your home,” he murmured.
    “Then today, when you could have waited for the police, you came inside, risking your life.”
    “Did you think I’d just watch that bastard shoot you?”
    “A cheating dog might have.”
    Sitting up straight and dropping his elbows onto his knees, Zach stared into the flames. “I’m not. I never was.”
    “I’m beginning to realize that,” she admitted. “What really happened?”
    Hardly recognizing himself in the dumb college kid he’d been, he said, “I went to my friend’s, pissed off, horny. My ex was there, flirting, offering to make it all better.”
    “I’ll bet.”
    “I don’t know, maybe I let her flirt with me out of hurt pride. I’d