Page 30 of It's You
-JB
Darcy’s heart hammered as she raised the flowers to her nose. Surely Jack wouldn’t have known the meaning behind yellow tulips. He would only have bought them for their cheerful color or because they were in season. Only a florist or a botanist, like Darcy, would take quiet pleasure in their hidden meaning.
Hopelessly in love.
Cradling the flowers in her arms, she pushed off with one foot, then leaned back in the swing, searching for Jack’s seventeen-year-old face in her mind, his dark handsomeness and fiery eyes, his fingertips on her throat, his lips brushing against hers, the anguish in his eyes.
It can’t be. It’s you.
She winced, and the image faded like watercolor as the face of thirty-seven-year-old Jack came into focus, and she heard the whispered words in her head, as soft as velvet.
I belong to you.
And you belong to me.
7
Amory stopped by Darcy’s studio on Friday morning to give her directions to Jack’s place, with a handwritten note inviting her to join him for dinner at six o’clock.
“You and Jack, huh?” Amory teased, handing her the cream-colored note onto which Jack had scrawled the invitation, directions, and his phone number.
“You really want to go there, Am? After that stunt you pulled with, um, Faith?”
“I like Faith.”
“Yeah. But you love Willow.”
“Willow doesn’t want me, Darcy. I have to move on.”
“How do you know she doesn’t?”
“Because if a woman wants a man, eventually she’s going to have to let him know.”
“You don’t see her eyes watching you?”
“It’s not enough. I’ve tried, and she just…Believe me, Darce. She doesn’t see me like that. I’m just your little brother.”
Amory’s eyes had looked so sad and heavy, Darcy didn’t push him any further and had changed the subject, asking about Faith instead. Amory invited his sister to join them for drinkssometime, and Darcy had smiled and nodded. If Faith was going to stay in the picture for a while, Darcy may as well get to know her a little.
For the rest of the day, when she wasn’t completely distracted thinking about her impending dinner with Jack or frustrated by Amory and Willow’s inability to see their compatibility, she worked on her thesis. She had set a difficult objective for herself: to find an unknown element of moss or lichen that could be synthesized into a useful herbal or medical remedy.
She made some good headway sorting her notes and even made an interesting discovery. The olivetol she’d found in a certain form of lichen she’d discovered in New Hampshire was a cousin element of the olivetolic acid found in cannabis. She’d chuckled at that, wondering how many college kids would run out to the woods to harvest, dry, and smoke lichen if she made her discoveries known. She’d have to talk to Willow about it and see if the Métis had already discovered the useful properties of olivetol hundreds of years before. Perhaps it could be combined with some other element of substance to boost its effect.Hmm…
She caught her watch face out of the corner of her eye and glanced at the time and gasping. Five o’clock. She only had an hour. She shut down her laptop and hurried back to the house to get ready.
Looking at her reflection in her bedroom mirror as she fastened small silver hoops into her pierced ears, she smiled at herself.Not bad for a quick change.
Her strawberry-blonde hair was parted to one side, and she had French-braided a small portion of the wider side to sweep it off her face. She had used nude powder to blend the freckles that settled across the pale skin of her high cheekbones, and some dark-brown mascara to make her green eyes pop. She opened a tube of the melon-colored lip gloss she had started wearing atgrad school in Boston and swiped the foam wand back and forth across her lips, liking the sensation of the slick, thick gloss.
She chose fitted, dark-blue skinny-fit jeans and a forest green cashmere scooped-neck sweater. Turning slightly, she surveyed her ass, wishing she was still a size eight, but she had gained a few pounds in the past few years, and the size ten jeans simply fit more comfortably now. Darcy didn’t much care about that sort of stuff, anyway. She hiked often, ate well, and got enough sleep. She didn’t need to look like a supermodel.
She looked down at the offerings in her meager jewelry box. A simple silver necklace, settled in the back of the second row, caught her eye, and she gasped softly.Where haveyoubeen?The necklace had been a present from Willow one summer after she returned from herNohkom’s house. A silver chain with a sideways figure eight at the bottom. Willow had explained that the charm was also known as an infinity symbol and could be found on the national flag of the Métis people. Darcy had worn the necklace almost constantly for the rest of high school, but lost it in college soon after Phillip had left her. And yet, here it was again. Returned to her.
She smiled at it like an old friend, then clasped it around her neck, grabbed her car keys, and turned off her bedroom light behind her.
As Darcy nearedJack’s house, she was grateful for her Land Rover’s V8 engine and four-wheel drive. She was further grateful that Jack didn’t appear to be an axe murderer because, Lord, his house was way back in the woods. Darcy, who pridedherself on knowing every inch of Proctor Woods and most other wild rambles in and around Carlisle, followed Jack’s directions and was surprised to find an easy-to-miss access road partially hidden by dense overgrowth in the north part of town.
The dirt road she traveled was rough and windy, and she wondered, fleetingly, how in the world she was ever going to find her way home without overhead lights. Luckily, her SUV had bright brights, but still, she’d have to take her time to ensure she was staying on the road and not trailblazing her own dangerous path back to downtown Carlisle. She enjoyed the woods around her and appreciated that very few trees had been cut down to make the road. Instead, the road weaved in and around the trees, messy but inoffensive.
