Free Five's A Crowd by Kasey Michaels

yourself a real beaut of a day, didn’t you? Tiff and I just got home—she wouldn’t leave the arcade until she beat my score on this great simulated racecourse—but we met Thelma on her way home to feed Killer. Man, is she ever on a roll—talking a mile a minute, even giving instant replays of the big hit. Sam boxed in the navy, you know. We really missed the fun, didn’t we?”
    “Be happy, Woody,” Holden told him, lifting a lit cigar to his mouth and clamping it between his teeth. He only smoked cigars, only occasionally and only in the off-season, but this seemed like a good time forindulging in some sort of vice. At least it kept him from going down to Taylor’s room and making a total ass out of himself—as if he could possibly top this afternoon’s performance. “You may even want to have a T-shirt made up, saying, ‘I survived the Holden Masters punch-out.’ Although you might want to head back downstairs pretty soon and catch the news, as I’m pretty sure this is one of those ‘film at eleven’ stories.”
    “That’s okay. When you’ve seen as many clips of old Peter flinging guitars and fists as I have, you get sorta jaded, you know? Tiff’s in heaven, by the way. She’s downstairs with Taylor, talking wedding gowns. Seems she saw a picture of some dame who wore a flesh-colored skintight leather leotard under a big white net cage and thinks Taylor would look great in it. I don’t think Taylor was impressed. You know, I thought there was something going on between you two. I mean, all that time alone on the beach and with you on the massage table?”
    “We run on the beach every day to keep my legs in shape, and I’m on that massage table to get my muscles loose.”
    “Uh-huh. Sure. So when’s the wedding? You think Peter and the guys will play at the reception? Man, you’re going to have to rent Madison Square Garden for all the people and press.”
    “There isn’t going to be—” Holden began, then quickly shut his mouth. Woody was a good kid, buta secret was no safer with him than it would be with Tiffany or Rich Newsome. “That is, Taylor and I don’t want a big show, Woody. We want to keep it private, you know. Maybe even fly to Vegas some weekend and do it there. So don’t go planning anything, all right? And for God’s sake, tell Tiffany to take a breath and step back. Hasn’t she been through enough weddings with Daddykins and Maw-maw to have lost the enthusiasm for another one?”
    Woody shrugged his shoulders, then pulled a stick of beef jerky out of his shorts pocket and began gnawing on it. “There’s something fishy here, Holden,” he said after a moment, causing his stepbrother to look at him warily. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be all happy and sappy? I mean, like you just got engaged. And where’s the ring? Peter gave the child bride a three-carat diamond she could use as a paperweight. It’s not like you to be a cheapskate, Holden. Or was this just so quick you didn’t have time to do it right?”
    A ring. Holden shut his eyes, feeling the six-story drop just in front of his make-it-up-as-you-go-along plan becoming more like he was about to take a swan dive off the Empire State Building. He hadn’t thought about a ring. He hadn’t thought about much of anything, when you got right down to it, other than how good Taylor had felt in his arms after two weeks of the most incredible physical attraction he’d ever encountered,how right. And how he could ever possibly get her back there again without leading her to believe this mock engagement might actually have a future. Which it didn’t, of course.
    Because he was not, never was, never would be the marrying kind, not with the evidence of Peter’s and Miranda’s combined track records to scare him off the idea. Not that marrying Taylor Angel was even within the realm of possibility, even if he did decide to settle down one day—at least a decade from now—succumbing to some as yet unfelt need for a