Page 80 of Third Time is the Charm
“He was sad…” she trailed off, taking a glass from Darcy’s outstretched hand. “And also concerned for me and probably a little bit angry at you. But mostly sad.”
“Why was he concerned for you? Did he think I was forcing you or something?” Darcy asked, irritation turning to anger in his voice at the abhorrent thought.
“No, no definitely not. He’s concerned because he knows what you did – or what I thought you did – and he doesn’t want to see me get hurt like that again.”
“Did you tell him—” Beth cut him off with a kiss.
“I did. I told him what I said to you before you left on Monday.I. Am. Yours.And that was enough because he didn’t question me or try to put you down or convince me to change my mind. He said he knew at the wedding from the look on my face when I saw you that he never truly stood a chance. I. Am. Yours.” Her words punctuated by her free hand coming up to rest on his chest over his heart. “That’s all he needs to know and that’s all you need to know. There is nothing between him and I except a now-strained friendship; one that I hope will heal with time.”
Even though she saw that he didn’t particularly like that thought, he just nodded and took a sip of wine before saying, “thank you for telling me. He seems like a nice guy.”
She chuckled. “I know you say that even though you still feel like you want to rip his head off for ever looking at me, but I appreciate your effort. Also, don’t thank me yet,” she sighed. “There’s more I need to tell you, but it doesn’t directly have anything to do with Col.”
“Ok…” he drawled.
Grabbing his hand, she led him back into the bedroom, climbing onto the bed and sitting with her knees bent to the side.
“Earlier today, Hannah, his assistant, came in to remind me about the dinner. I hadn’t seen Col all week until tonight so I asked her what was up. Normally, he stops by with coffee in the morning,” she began, ignoring the flash of possessiveness and jealousy that flared in his eyes as he joined her on the mattress. “She said he’d been dealing with issues involving the permits that we had to submit to the city in order to get the roads closed for the race.”
He nodded, acknowledging that he was following along before drinking more wine from his glass.
“So, when we got to dinner I asked him what was up since Hannah and I had both worked with him personally on submitting all of them. He told me that he got a call Monday afternoon that the permits had been denied – no, that some of the paperwork was missing altogether and other documents had been filled out improperly and had been destroyed. This isn’t the first year that the Center has put this on, so it was highly unlikely that any of that was true, but what was even more concerning was that just last week or the week before, we’d gotten the ‘O.K.’ from the city that everything was good to go.”
Beth watched Darcy’s eyebrows raise in intrigue.
“Exactly. So, Colin freaked out on the woman – well, not really freaked out, but sort of. Anyway, she didn’t know anything so she told him that her supervisor would be giving him a call. The supervisor called earlier today and told him that in the computer she could see how the documents were marked as ‘Approved’ but then switched to ‘Denied’. Since the applications were destroyed, she couldn’t tell him why. She said that she would have her boss call him on Monday and in the meantime, she gave him the name of who reviewed the documents for him to contact to see if she could clarify why they were marked as ‘Denied.’”
“Yeah, that’s not right. Somebody fucked up big time. And the race is next weekend?” he clarified.
“Yup,” she said, her lips pursing in frustrated concern. “So, he went down there and talked to the girl who changed the status. She said someone called her the other day and offered her twenty thousand dollars to do it, so she did; she apparently broke down and admitted it was a mistake but that she was too afraid to fix it. That’s not really my call, Col can handle that however he wants,” Beth continued, now chewing on her lower lip as she got to the most important part of the story.
“Who would do that? Over a charity race?” Darcy asked in disgusted confusion.
“Caroline.” The name flew from her lips like rancid milk that she needed to spit out. Darcy’s eyes shot to hers, darkening with rage
“Caroline Bingley?” he asked, his voice deadly quiet and hard as steel.
“She’s coming here.” Beth took another sip of her wine trying to dampen the dread of that thought.
“How do you know? Did she contact you? I swear to God, I will kill her for this; I tried to handle this discreetly and politely – hell, even cordially – for Charles’ sake and that bitch—” His hand came up over his mouth, cutting off the parade of expletives eager to march from his mouth.
“I talked to Anne,” Beth began, her words silencing him even further. “She emailed me and told me to call her. When I did, she told me what has been going on with her mother and Caroline and that when she went to her mom’s place yesterday, she overheard Caroline telling her that she was coming up to Boston.”
“Christ.”
“Not that there was anything to see at the wedding, but she must have thought there might be something more going on, and then whomever she or Mrs. Bingley has watching you must have tipped her off that you’d come to Boston,”
“What the hell.” He drained the rest of his wine, his knuckles turning white around the stem of the glass. “We’re going to get you a restraining order tomorrow. I’ll have my assistant email me all of the documents – everything that you sent me months ago – and we’re going to the police station first thing tomorrow. And then we are going to sort out the security for this event – make sure she can’t gain access to any of the private functions that I’m assuming are going to go on,” he laid out, his brain working overtime through every scenario. The old, fearful and insecure Darcy would have told her that she couldn’t work the event, that he didn’t want her to and that was that. This Darcy –her Darcy –knew how important her work was to her, and wasn’t about to make her sacrifice that because of Caroline.
“Ok,” she agreed. Her eager acquiescence startling him. “You were right about her all along. I trust you and your judgment. You know her better than I do and I will do whatever you think if it means getting her out of our life.”
He reached over, taking her now-empty glass from her hand, and setting both of them down on the nightstand.
Cupping her face in his hands, his eyes seared into her soul. “You know I will never let anything happen to you,” he promised her.
“I know. And I will never let anything happen to you,” she returned, rising up on her knees, her torso pressing against his; she kissed him softly.
“We’re going to figure this out, ok?” His thumbs traced over her lips. “I’m not going to let her hurt you.”
