A Hot Holiday Collection

Chapter 5

5

OLIVIA

E ven after spending the whole day trying to calm down—and doing some serious retail therapy since my dad pressed his credit card in my palm and told me to go buy whatever I wanted—I was still pissed off over the stalkery stunt Leland and Danny had pulled. But Delia didn’t seem to be having the same problem.

“Nope, I’m over it already.”

I dropped my shopping bags on the floor near my closet and flopped down onto my bed. “I don’t understand how you’ve come to terms with this so quickly. You barely know Danny.”

“I know he’s Leland’s best friend.”

“Yeah, and before today, I would have agreed that was a ringing endorsement.” Not now, though. With what I’d found out this morning, I felt as though I barely knew the man I’d been dating for two years, and I was still reeling from the discovery.

“Maybe some orgasms would help you relax.” Although I knew she’d given Danny her virginity today—that was another thing I’d figured out while eavesdropping earlier—my eyes widened at her suggestion. “They certainly mellowed me out.”

I didn’t see any orgasms in my near future, which made me even crankier. “I get that you’re fuck-drunk right now, but I need you to focus, Delia.”

“Maybe you’re just brooding over the wrong thing,” she suggested.

My brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“Do you love Leland?”

There was no use denying the truth. “Yes.”

“And do you think he loves you?”

Thinking back on the past two years, I didn’t see how anyone could be that good at pretending. “I guess I do.”

“Then you need to figure out a way to get over it, too.”

If I wanted a future with him, I knew she was right. “But how do I do that?”

“You have to talk to him and really listen to what he has to say.”

With an incredible sense of timing, Leland opened my door and came into the bedroom. “Sorry. Gotta run. He’s here.”

“Remember what I said,” she cried right before I ended the call and dropped my cell phone on the mattress next to me.

“Are you sure you want to have this conversation up here?” I jerked my chin toward the door he’d shut behind him. “Odds are good my dad won’t be able to resist the temptation of checking on us if we’re alone in my room, and it’s definitely better if he doesn’t know the crappy stuff you pulled.”

Leland didn’t look worried as he crossed over to the chair at my desk and pulled it out to sit down. “I have a feeling he’s going to cut me some slack for this.”

I didn’t see how that was possible when he'd been super strict with my boyfriends in the past and knew Leland had done something to upset me. But if he wanted to risk my dad coming up to check on us and overhearing something he shouldn’t, that was on him.

Sitting up and crossing my arms over my chest, I muttered, “If so, that makes one person in the house who’s willing to do so.”

Leland’s lips curved into an inexplicably smug smile. “There’s two, actually.”

“Two?” I echoed, my head rearing back in surprise.

“Yup.” He nodded. “While I was helping your mom untangle strings of lights in the garage, she spent the whole time giving me advice on how to make our relationship work.”

Hearing that both of my parents were rooting for us to succeed gave me hope that we’d find a way to move past this mess. “What did she suggest?”

“That I skip over the excuses and get to the important shit—apologizing and groveling.”

His answer didn’t surprise me since I’d seen how my dad handled things when he messed up. “And are you ready to do that?”

“I’m ready to do whatever it takes,” he vowed, leaning forward and resting his forearms against his thighs. “I fucked up by not coming clean about why I asked you out the first time, and I’m so damn sorry that I hurt you. That’s the last thing I ever wanted to do.”

I appreciated that he wasn’t trying to make any excuses, but one apology wasn’t enough to wipe away my hurt feelings. “I always knew that you made up the whole thing about being stabbed by a redhead, but I thought it was cute when it was an excuse because you wanted to go out with me. Only it turned out that’s not true. You didn’t want to date me and never would’ve asked me out if it weren’t for Danny wanting you to keep an eye on Delia for him.”

Leland crossed the room and dropped to his knees in front of me, taking my hands in his. “If I hadn’t done that favor, I would’ve ended up being a sorry sack of shit. I was a fucking dumbass two years ago, but not so much that I didn’t know there was something special about you. Even then, I needed the push Danny gave me to man up and ask you out because I was too focused on being the life of the party to see what was smack-dab in front of my face—the love of my life.”

His sweet declaration wiped away a lot of my doubt, but there was still a niggle of uncertainty I couldn’t seem to get past. “What if Delia had been best friends with someone else? Would you have spent the past two years in a relationship with her while I ended up with some other guy?”

“Fuck no.” He shook his head as his grip on my hands tightened. “No way in hell would you have ended up with anyone but me. You were always meant to be mine, and if Danny hadn’t given me the perfect excuse to ask you out, I would’ve pulled my head out of my ass and done it on my own at some point.”

His flash of jealousy soothed my injured pride. “Do you really think so?”

“Damn straight.” He raised one of my hands to his mouth and brushed a kiss against my knuckles.

I hadn’t entirely forgiven him for keeping the truth from me for so long, but our conversation was a step in the right direction. “We still?—”

The sound of the doorbell echoed through the house, interrupting my train of thought. “I wonder who that could be. My parents didn’t mention that anyone was going to stop by for a visit today.”

Leland flashed me a mysterious smile when my dad called, “It’s for you, Olivia!”

I narrowed my eyes as he helped me stand. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Remember that groveling I mentioned?” His grin widened when I nodded. “It includes gifts.”

“Gifts?” I echoed as he led me downstairs to where my dad was standing near the front door, holding a large gift basket. “That’s for me?”

“The tag has your name on it,” my dad confirmed before glancing at Leland. I could’ve sworn there was a hint of approval in his gaze, but it was there and gone too quick for me to be sure.

When I reached out to take the basket from him, he shook his head and handed it over to Leland instead. “Whoa, this sucker is heavier than I expected.”

“What did you do? Buy the whole store out?” I asked as I peered at the bottles and jars nestled in the basket. “It’ll take me forever to go through all this stuff.”

“With how much you like to take long baths? You’ll blow through them in no time at all,” Leland disagreed.

My dad stomped away, muttering, “I’m rooting for you to work things out with my daughter, kid, but I’m going to have to kick your ass if you say shit like that in front of me again.”

“Oops,” I giggled, my cheeks filling with heat as I thought about how my last long bath had ended—with a whole lot of water on my bathroom floor and several mind-blowing orgasms.

“Not exactly what I had in mind when this came, but I’ll take time alone with you however it comes,” Leland murmured as he carried the gift basket into the living room and set it on the coffee table.

I dropped onto the cushion next to him after he sat on the couch, leaning forward to uncap one of the bottles and sniff. “Pear?”

“I know you prefer strawberry-scented bath stuff, but this was as close as I could get to a partridge in a pear tree with only a few hours of planning.”

His explanation made me smile since “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was my all-time favorite holiday song. “Are you going to take a leaf from Danny’s playbook and dance for me when you get to the tenth day?”

“Hell no,” he growled, pulling me onto his lap. “Never mind. I take it back. You have to know that I’d do anything for you, Olivia.”

I searched his face, the last of my tension melting away at the sincerity in his eyes. “I do, but I might still have moments for a little while when I need you to remind me.”

“I promise to make all of this up to you.” He cupped my cheeks in his palms and lightly brushed his lips over mine. “When I’m done, you won’t have even the tiniest speck of doubt about how much I love you.”