Page 4 of Love You
She didn’t respond, which made things even more awkward than they already were. He searched for something humorous to say that might put her at ease but couldn’t think of anything off the top of his head.
When they got to her Volkswagen, she tugged the T-shirt down, even though it already fell to her knees, and gazed up at him. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming here like this. You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”
He shook his head. “Never.”
“Promise?”
“Scout’s honor.” He held up his right arm and did the three-finger salute. And then for no reason at all he touched her lips with his and kissed her.
Chapter Two
In and out, in and out. Darcy practiced her breathing exercises on the drive home. Exactly the way her therapist had taught her. A year of counseling and she still needed to use the technique to calm herself. And right now, she was one lungful away from a full-blown panic attack.
Of all the boneheaded moves, stuffing herself into a Victoria’s Secret scrap of lace, breaking into Win’s house, and begging him to do her was right up there with . . . her wedding night. But she didn’t want to go there. She’d had enough humiliation in the last hour. No need to reminisce about years past.
She should’ve known better than to make a fool of herself over a guy who could spend the night with a supermodel if he wanted to. But of all the men she knew, Win was perfect for what she had in mind. A one-night or even better, a one-month, stand with her own personal scholar of the Kama Sutra. His reputation as a man who knew his way around a woman’s body preceded him.
And while he could charm Darcy’s seventy-eight-year-old nana out of her granny panties with just one smile, he wasn’t the type of guy someone like her could get serious about, which made him all the more suitable. True, his buff bod, chiseled features, and deep blue eyes were the stuff of underwear commercials, she didn’t want to be a nurse maid to a man-child.
But all she’d gotten for her mortifying stunt was a pity kiss, a sort of consolation prize for the weird girl who answered the phones at his family’s adventure company and was delusional enough to throw herself at him. How would she ever face him again?
Her cell phone rang and despite Win’s rejection, it was hard to be angry with a man who called to make sure her five-minute drive home had gone safely. Who else could it be at this ungodly hour? She pulled into her grandmother’s driveway and answered because it would be petty not to.
“Hello.”
“Do you know where my red tie with the blue stripes is? I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.”
“Lewis? Is that you? It’s three o’clock in the morning.” She kicked herself for not checking caller ID first.
He sighed. “Sorry. You were always a night owl so I thought you wouldn’t mind.”
Well, she did mind. Divorce meant never having to say find your own goddamned tie. “Last time I saw it”—which was a year ago—“it was in the bottom drawer of the Chippendale highboy in the guest room.”
“Walk with me,” he said and she rolled her eyes.
Darcy hung on, listening to his breathing as he climbed the stairs and scraped open what sounded like a drawer. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’re a peach, Darcy Wallace.”
Yes, she was, even if she felt like a failure. “Good night, Lewis.” She hung up before he could rope her into something else she didn’t want to do.
The sprinklers were on and she zigzagged across the cobblestone walkway, trying to dodge getting wet. Unlike the modern monstrosity Darcy had grown up in or the Reno condo she’d left a year ago, Nana’s gardens were filled with flowers. Persian violets, Siberian irises, Oriental poppies, Japanese anemones, and plants Darcy had never heard of.
Her grandfather had built flower boxes for the clapboard cottage before he died and Nana still spent hours every day tending to her aster, English lavender, and meadow rue. What her grandmother couldn’t manage, the gardener handled. Darcy’s thumb was about as green as a desert summer.
The bursts of color and sweet fragrances from the yard filled her with happiness. And the cozy cottage was more of a home than any place she’d ever resided. Still, she wished her new life held more excitement. Being a telephone operator by day and sleeping alone every night wasn’t much different than the existence she’d left behind.
“Darcy, is that you, sweetheart?”
She cringed, wishing she could’ve snuck in undetected. But Darcy’s grandmother slept in a bedroom on the main floor because the stairs to the master suite had become too difficult for her to manage. “It’s me, Nana. Sorry I woke you. Go back to bed.”
Her gray-haired grandmother padded into the front room in slippers and took Darcy in from head to toe. “Where are your shoes, sweetheart?”
“I left them in the car.” It’s not like she would be needing them anytime soon. The last time she’d worn them was to her divorce party, a small affair of one at an expensive restaurant where they’d gotten her order wrong and lost her wrap in the coat check.
Her grandmother came around to noticing the T-shirt that hung in folds over Darcy’s figure. Lewis’s T-shirts had been tight, stretching across her chest like an ACE bandage. “Was it a swim party, dear?”
She let out a breath, hating to lie. But how do you tell your grandmother you were making a house call for sex? You didn’t, even if Hilde was the most progressive seventy-eight-year-old she knew.
“No, Nana, I was working late.” Since Darcy put in a lot of hours at Garner Adventure it wasn’t too far of a stretch, though three in the morning would’ve been an all-time record.
