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Chapter Two
Holly's heartrate continued to skyrocket. But now, it wasn't just anxiety fueling her. Instead, rage slowly eclipsed the anxiousness. Holly wiped her cheek, scooped the papers back up off the desk and then stormed out of her office, hands balled into fists. This time, when she crossed through the open areas, there were no snarky comments or pitying looks.
Everyone got out of her way. Movers and co-workers alike scrambled to get out of her path, not wanting Holly to take her anger out on them. Those she had worked with had seen her temper more than once, and none of them had ever been eager to be on the receiving end of it. And while none of them was her target right then, Holly wasn't sure she would be able to contain herself if one of them opened his or her mouth and said something stupid. Not this time.
But none of them did. Moments later, Holly sat in the driver's seat of her Jag once again. She tossed the paperwork onto the passenger seat and reached out to take hold of the steering wheel. Her fingers wrapped tightly around the dark leather, squeezing like she was trying to break it off the dash.
Breathe in, breathe out,she told herself, closing her eyes and trying to force her anger back into its cage. There was a time and a place to let it all out, but driving down the freeway wasn't one of them. Before she went anywhere, she needed to get control of herself again. If not, she was liable to do something stupid or dangerous.
And while she wanted to throttle her ex-husband right then and there, she would have to wait until she was face to face with him. Driving angry was going to make things worse, not better. And she knew perfectly well that anger would still be there, waiting, once she was in front of Will again.
It took a few moments, but eventually, she was calm enough to fish the keys out of her pocket and start the Jag. It roared to life, and Holly quickly made her way out of the parking lot and back toward the highway. She was careful to drive safely, but she wasn't wasting any time either.
The sooner she arrived at her ex's place, the sooner she could rip him a new one. And boy, did she plan on leaving a mark!
She had made sure to have a nest egg put aside for not only herself but for their kids, should they ever fall on hard times. She could handle having to move out of their six-thousand square foot home and quit the job she'd had as far back as she could remember. It hurt, it was tough, but it was doable, and she would survive.
Going to prison because Will was a damn idiot? That was definitely not an option. She would sooner move to Alaska and live in an Igloo than let Will's stupidity drag her to jail. No, he was going to fix this problem, one way or another.
When Holly pulled the Jag into the driveway leading up to the large house, a sudden sense of sadness swept through her. This was a house she was familiar with. It belonged to Will's mother. When everything had exploded, it was the only place he'd been able to go.
But, before then, Holly had been there countless times. She had brought the kids there often to visit with their grandmother back in the old days. They'd had birthday and holiday parties there. She had stayed there and helped care for her mother-in-law after she'd had her knee replaced. The woman had insisted she could manage fine, but Holly had known better and insisted on helping out until she could walk again. It had been a couple of weeks of working from a guest room she had converted into an office, but it had been absolutely fine. Holly had always liked the older woman.
Even now, it was hard to think anything negative about her. Just because her son had turned out to be a complete idiot didn't mean Holly had to hate her mother-in-law too.
When she stepped out of the Jag, she kept her eyes laser-focused on the front door, refusing to let her gaze wander. Her anger still bubbled below the surface, and she wasn't about to let a burst of nostalgia get in the way. Will had this outburst coming, and nothing was going to stop her from giving him the chewing out he so very much deserved.
Well, if she was honest with herself, he deserved that and so much more.
Knocking on the front door, Holly listened to the thundering echoes through the house. Her mother-in-law had resisted getting a doorbell for some reason that Holly had never understood. With a house that large, it was silly not to have a doorbell. Case in point, Holly knocked a total of four times without getting an answer.
She knew Will was home. There was nowhere else for him to be if he wasn't at the office. With a sigh, Holly reached down and tried the doorknob, pleasantly surprised to find it unlocked. It didn't squeak even slightly as she opened the door, first listening for any source of noise to determine where her rat of an ex might have been hiding out.
When she didn't hear anything, she called out for him. "Will? It's Holly. Where are you? We need to talk!" Somehow, she managed to keep the bulk of her anger out of her voice. But Will was bound to know if Holly was there, it wasn't going to be a good conversation.
They'd long ago left behind courteous conversations. These days, they avoided talking to each other unless it was absolutely necessary. And in those instances, things usually devolved into shouting matches fairly quickly.
Will didn't respond, of course, and Holly let out a sigh, closing the front door behind her. Hands-on hips, she surveyed the house and its surroundings. As far as she could tell, it was empty, but she knew that wasn't the truth. Will was in there, somewhere. She had to find him.
Like a bloodhound on a mission, Holly made her way through the house, searching for her prey. It didn't take long to find Will in the sunroom at the back of the house, lounging on a couch with his feet up on the coffee table as he watched TV. For a moment, she stood there and stared at him. This wasn't the man she had married. The man she had fallen in love with never would have sat around dressed like a slob, flipping through channels aimlessly.
He had always been like her, unable to sit around and do nothing for very long. But while she had kept herself busy during this fiasco, he'd given up. When he picked up a glass from the table beside him, Holly snorted. It didn't take a genius to realize he was drinking whiskey before it was lunchtime.
The pity she felt for him only lasted for a few moments before the anger welled up once again and overpowered everything else. She stalked into the room and then tossed the stack of paperwork onto the table. "Just when I thought you couldn't mess up my life any more than you already have, I find out there's a chance we might go to jail because you owe the IRS more money than God!"
Will blinked up at her in surprise. Had he really not heard Holly pounding on the front door and calling his name? Then again, if he was drinking this early, maybe that wasn't out of the realm of possibility. "Good to see you, too," Will said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He glanced at the pile of papers in front of him and then shrugged them off.
That enraged Holly even more. He may have given up and accepted his fate, but she sure as heck hadn't! He had dug this grave, and now it was up to him to fill it back in, either with dirt or his own body. He wasn't going to drag her down with him, not if she could help it.
"You need to get with the IRS and figure this out before both of us land in jail," Holly demanded. Hands-on hips, she stood only a few feet away from him, glaring. For a brief moment, she had a flashback to when their son was a kid and had done something to land himself in hot water. But this time, it wasn't her ten-year-old son she scolded. It was her forty-nine-year-old ex-husband who should've been well beyond needing a talking to.
"I'll handle it," Will answered with another shrug of his shoulders. His words were slurred slightly, confirming his glass of whiskey wasn't his first one this morning.
Holly gritted her teeth together. She had the urge to snatch the glass out of his hand and toss it across the room. If they had still been married, she would have done just that. Maybe it would've snapped him out of this funk he was in and back to reality.
But they weren't married anymore, Holly reminded herself. If he wanted to be an alcoholic slob, then that was his problem, not hers. As long as he fixed the crap with the IRS or at the very least told them she had nothing to do with it, she didn't much care what happened to him.
That thought was almost as shocking as the letter she had gotten. It was hard to believe how little she actually cared about this man anymore. It almost made her laugh to realize how different things were between the two of them. Any semblance of love she had once felt for him had gone out the window a long time ago.
