Page 28 of Love You
“Then why did you dump him?” he asked.
“What makes you think I dumped him and not the other way around?”
Good question. But something intrinsic told him it had been her choice to leave the marriage, not Lewis’s. Perhaps it was the way Lewis had hovered over her at the rodeo.
“Just a gut instinct,” he said. “It was those string ties he wears. They drove you nuts.”
She laughed, even though Win could tell she didn’t want to. “How about we talk about something else?”
“How about we don’t?” The more she resisted, the more tempted he was to dig in.
Maybe Lewis was a compulsive gambler. Nah, too interesting. The man had come off dull as dirt. Then again it was always the unassuming ones who turned out to be cross dressers or serial killers.
She stared at him over the rim of her water glass. “Why all the sudden interest in my love life?”
“If we’re going to work together there should be no secrets between us,” he said, and grinned.
The little witch shook her head. “It’s private . . . and painful.”
Painful.
That stopped him in his tracks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pick at scabs.”
Yet, he still wanted to know.
Chapter Eight
The FlashTag group came Friday night and Darcy met them at the small airport outside of town. In recent years, the airfield had grown to accommodate the influx of wealthy part-time residents who flew up in their private jets from the Bay Area and Los Angeles to enjoy a weekend on the slopes or a summer at the lake.
FlashTag had chartered a puddle jumper out of San Jose. Darcy was going to shuttle the three VIPs—Remy, Sue, and Russell—to the Four Seasons, let them get a good night’s sleep, and pick them up the next morning for breakfast and a tour of GA and Glory Junction. Win was supposed to be with her on pickup duty to meet and greet their prospective clients but had run late on his white-water rafting excursion. No surprise there. As long as she’d known him he had trouble keeping to a schedule.
She had no intention of letting him screw this up for her. If need be she’d handle the orientation on her own, which would be no easy feat because she knew nothing about adventure sports. Win’s unreliability was infuriating.
Worse, she’d begun dreaming about him in her sleep. Erotic dreams that felt so real she’d wake up in a sweat, panting. She knew she wasn’t the first woman to fantasize about him. Win was the kind of man who could stir any female, even a dead one. But no one could accuse her of being delusional. That’s why she refused to be part of his adoring fan club.
“It’s really pretty here,” Sue said, staring out of the passenger-side window of the minivan as they climbed higher up the mountain. The pink-streaked sky was fading from dusk to dark and soon it would be too hard to see much of anything.
“It’s even more beautiful in the daytime.” Darcy had always loved it here. Even as a young girl, visiting her grandparents, she’d known that Glory Junction was a special place. “I think you’ll like your accommodations. It’s a beautiful hotel. There’s a full gym and spa and indoor and outdoor pools if you’re interested in taking a dip before you go to bed or tomorrow morning.”
She hoped she wasn’t babbling. Small talk and being charming was Win’s bag, not hers. Her skills had always been behind the scenes. She silently cursed him for missing this. First impressions were important and she worried that she wasn’t making a good one. The whole drive had been full of long stretches of silence.
“Anyone interested in getting a drink in the bar?” Remy asked, and she fervently hoped the invitation didn’t include her. Remy, Sue, and Russell seemed perfectly nice but she’d never been comfortable in a group of strangers.
Her phone beeped with an incoming text as she drove through the gates of the Four Seasons. She waited to pull up to the front of the hotel before taking a quick glance. Not Win, Lewis. Darcy shoved the phone back in her purse.
“Here we are,” she said too brightly, and jumped out to help with the luggage. A bellhop beat her to it.
She went inside to get her guests checked in and to make sure that everything was covered on Garner Adventure’s account.
“I know you probably want to get situated in your rooms.” Darcy scribbled her cell phone number on a stack of Win’s business cards—she didn’t have any of her own—and handed them to the trio. “Feel free to call if anything comes up. We’ll pick you up at the valet stand at nine o’clock tomorrow.”
They said good-bye and she sprinted out of the lobby, breathing a sigh of relief. That had gone off without a hitch. At least for now. What she’d like to do was stop by Win’s apartment and threaten to break his legs if he pulled a disappearing act in the morning. Instead, she took the minivan home and nearly took out a row of Nana’s azalea bushes, trying to back the damn thing up to the garage.
The first thing she wanted to do was take off her shoes, which had pinched her toes all day, and take a hot bath. Then she planned to raid the refrigerator as she’d never had dinner. Before she could get in the house her phone rang. Finally.
“I can’t believe you hung me out to dry,” she blurted by way of a formal greeting. Okay, it wasn’t exactly Win’s fault that his tour had taken longer than expected. But more than likely he’d dawdled, which he had a habit of doing. Or had spent so much time flirting with his all-female group that they’d gone into overtime. Darcy had seen the women before they’d left for the river. Four blondes in teeny-weeny bikini tops. He was probably at Old Glory with them now or . . . she didn’t even want to think about it.
“Darcy, it’s me, Lewis.”
