Holly Lane Read Online Free Page A

this time. Sheesh, to think she was the one who’d been drinking.
    A few feet away from her, he let his narrowed eyes run the length of her body, brow tightly knit, as if sizing up the situation yet again and realizing that she really wasn’t going to just disappear. “Fine,” he finally bit off, then turned to go. But as he reached the door, he stopped and looked back, and this time he spoke with a little less contempt. “What are you doing here anyway? I mean, since when are you the rent-a-cabin type?”
    She didn’t let her gaze waver from his. “Since my husband left me for another woman,” she reminded him sharply. Although her sharpness faded regrettably as she added, “I just . . . wanted to get away from everything for a couple of days before the holidays, that’s all.”
    “Oh.” Apparently he’d been so caught up in his own . . . issues, problems—or whatever was going on with him—that for a moment he’d forgotten hers. And then his eyes softened, his angry look fading to something like . . . sadness. For her. Kind of like pity. Yuck. “Just so you know, I think he’s an idiot.”
    And despite the fact that Adam still wasn’t acting like himself, and that she didn’t want to be the object of sympathy, the sentiment warmed something in her chest, just a little. “Thanks,” she said softly.
    And then the door closed behind him and she stood there staring at it.
    What had just happened here? And what the hell had Adam in such a nasty mood? She hadn’t talked to him much since she and Jeff had split, and it did help a little to find out he thought Jeff had made a mistake, but that aside—what had turned Mr. All American good guy Adam Becker into the snotty jerk she’d just encountered?
    Oh well—whatever the case, at least now she had her cabin back to herself.
    A dam wasn’t acting like himself and he knew it. Problem was, he just didn’t care much at the moment. Too many thoughts spun through his head as he trod back through the falling snow toward the small office that served the cabins and nearby campground.
    Damn, when had it started coming down this hard? He pulled the collar of his denim jacket up around his neck to ward off the cold wind that kept the thick, heavy flakes swirling around him.
    He still couldn’t believe he’d walked into his cabin to find Sue Ann there. Sue Ann and all her girlfriends—that he could have believed. But Sue Ann alone, in a cabin—it just didn’t make sense.
    Aw hell, cut her a break. Her world’s been turned upside down—she doesn’t have to do things that make sense right now. Still, what were the chances? Of all the places she could retreat to, she’d had to choose his place? His actual cabin, the same one he and his twin boys, Jacob and Joey, came to every year on Thanksgiving weekend.
    Not that the twins were with him this year. That’s what had him in such a Grinchy mood. When his ex-wife, Sheila, had told him just over a week ago that her parents wanted to take the boys out west to Aspen for the entire month of December . . . well, it had shot his holidays to hell before they’d even started. Of course, he shared custody and could have said no, but he’d have seemed like an ass, especially the way his kids’ eyes had lit up at the thought of all that snow. Hell—even their second-grade teacher, Miss Wallace, had agreed to the plan, citing that travel was educational, so long as the twins kept up with their work via a laptop he’d given them to take on the trip.
    Adam and his dad had camped here in the valley a lot when he was a kid—in summer the fishing was good, there were canoes and paddleboats, and hiking trails crisscrossed the hills surrounding the lake. So nearly as soon as his boys could walk, he’d started packing them up and bringing them over here—and Thanksgiving weekend had become an easy time to do it because Sheila had always used that weekend to drive to Columbus and shop with her friends. And even still,