Strapless (27 page)

His jaw hardened. “Opposites attract. Like male and female.”

“Yes, and I wouldn't change a minute of these past weeks…or Sydney…but don't you see, Dylan? We're a fantasy come true. I looked across the Westin bar and saw this gorgeous guy wearing an Akubra—after Gran said ‘bring one home for me, too—'”

“Great. Thanks.”

“—and I did something I've never done before in my life. I took a risk—and gave you a come-hither smile. And you came.”

“More than once,” he said, but his weak smile twitched. “I don't have time for courting games, Darcie. I want a wife soon, some babies…”

She had to agree. “You need sons. To carry on the Stud.”

“I'm ready to settle down.”

“I'm not.”

“Why not?” he said.

Her heart drummed. In his roundabout way, was he asking her to
marry
him? To live on a
farm?
His attitude, like his earlier possessiveness, convinced her all over again that he was, at heart, too much like her parents.

“I have the Wunderthings opening to think of… Gran…the rest of my family here in the States, work…”

“Cutter Longridge,” he said with a bitter edge. “Merrick Lowell. Do
they
make you happy?”

His touch rough yet tender, Dylan pulled her near and nuzzled her neck until she moaned.
He
made her happy. But he was all wrong for her, even if at times she wanted him to be The One. Hadn't he just proved that with his usual, traditional approach to a man with a woman?

“This is what it's all about, Matilda,” he insisted. “Mating, procreation.” When she didn't answer, he sighed but moved closer, behind her, his head next to hers on the same pillow. “Maybe I'm not saying this right,” he murmured.

“Maybe you are.” Which scared her.

Long after Dylan finally fell asleep, and his breathing sounded regular and deep in the quiet room, Darcie lay staring at her ceiling and her stars. Usually this worked. But when rosy dawn light bathed the walls, she still had no answers.

He hadn't said he loved her.

Oh, God, how could she lose him? How could she keep him?

“We'll work it out, Matilda” she remembered him saying. “We can.”

H
er grandmother would survive, Eden assured Darcie the next afternoon. Dylan had gone to the cafeteria for coffee and doughnuts all around—violating Gran's new dietary restrictions, “but you only live once,” she said—and the two women were alone. This was an opportunity not to be missed, and rare with Julio and Dylan always near. Darcie watched Gran check the doorway again to make sure it was empty. It didn't take her long to get to the point.

“You're
not
letting that man go,” Eden persisted.

“Unless you can fake another heart attack before tomorrow, I am.” Eden sent her a chiding look, and Darcie added, “What else can I do? I have a job here.”

“Then why aren't you at Wunderthings now?”

Darcie smiled. It was only three o'clock. She'd left Walt fuming over a report at the same time he wished her well, and Greta most likely plotting against her, but this seemed more important. “Because my favorite grandmother is lying here in this icky hospital and I needed to make sure she was all right.”

Eden picked up a hand mirror from her bed table and studied her face. “My tests were perfectly normal. My cho
lesterol's a bit high but the doctor has given me some wonderful new drug, without side effects, and in no time I'll be like a twenty-year-old virgin.”

“That'll be the day.” She grinned. “Not the twenty-something part.”

Eden smiled slyly. Her auburn hair stood up in spikes, more mussed than Darcie had ever seen her. Not from illness, she suspected. Eden grappled it into place.

“I sent Julio home to feed Jane this morning—but we did have the most lovely interlude beforehand. Several, in fact,” Eden said.

“Me, too.”
The entryway, up against the wall, this morning, in bed, Dylan's hard weight along my back…

“We are very lucky girls.”

“Women,” Darcie corrected her, as she always did Janet.

“At this age thinking of myself as a girl does wonders for my face.” She smoothed lotion onto her skin, then used a dark pencil on her eyebrows.

“Whatever floats your boat, Gran.”

“Full makeup. I was a ruin without it yesterday. What must those paramedics have thought when they lifted me onto the stretcher with those bulging muscles? Speaking of which…” Eden's smile disappeared. “I've met a number of your young men since you moved to New York—and Dylan is by far the best, despite Cutter Longridge. Dylan's honest, straightforward, sexy as a Chippendale dancer—”

“Better,” Darcie could attest.

“—and he does something for that Akubra that could stop an old woman's heart. Not mine, of course.” She applied powder-blue eyeshadow to her lids. “Dylan Rafferty cares deeply for you, dear. It's in his eyes, and the way he treats you.”

“You seem to have done a thesis on the subject. Maybe he just likes doughnuts.”

“No, he thinks of you before himself.” She pursed her coral-painted lips. “Like Julio. Need I remind you of Merrick Lowell?”

Darcie leaned around the array of pots and jars and tubes
on Eden's table to hug her. “Merrick keeps calling but I won't talk. His choice seems clear enough. I won't play the fool a third time. I wish you the very best with Julio. I know I was less than enthusiastic at first, but I think he's just right for you after all.”

“You don't mind our difference in age?”

Darcie beamed. “What do four decades matter when there's true love?”

“You adorable child.” Gran held on tight. When she pulled away, her eyes were shining. “What will you do once Dylan's gone—Annie, too? I hate to see you live alone.”

“You sound like Dylan.”

“He's right. There's always room with me, you know. Julio likes you very much. He calls you my
niña linda.
My pretty little girl.”

“I'm not a little girl, Gran.”

Eden's expression softened even more. “So you keep reminding me—but you're wrong. A part of you will always be that little girl to me, and to Hank and Janet. One day you'll realize how lovely that is…to have memories with people who've known you all your life. As you really are.”

Darcie blinked. “Are you trying to make me cry?”

“I'm trying to be sure you make the right choice.”

“Dylan?” she said.

“If he makes you happy, yes. But don't think too much. Take happiness where you find it. Life is short, dear.”

Feeling uncomfortable with Dylan's scrutiny last night, and Gran's today, Darcie drew back. When the time was right, she'd know about Dylan. About everything.

“Don't push,” she said, then made a great show of smoothing Eden's blanket, rearranging her makeup bottles into neat rows as if to impose logic on her own life.

“No flat whites, sorry, ladies.”
Lydies,
he said. Dylan came into the room carrying a tray full of hospital mugs and cream-filled doughnuts. His private smile for Darcie turned her knees weak.

“Flat whites?” Eden echoed.

“Ozspeak,” Darcie said, “in other words, latte,” fixing her grandmother's coffee the way she liked it, then handing her a paper plate with half a doughnut. “I don't think you should eat more than this, even with your new medication.”

“I won't push. You won't fuss.”

Dylan put an arm around Darcie's shoulders and stood beside Eden's bed, his coffee cup in his free hand. He seemed to have a need to touch Darcie all the time today. As if he knew he wouldn't be able to touch her tomorrow, or any day after that.

“Did I miss something?”

“Girl talk,” Eden said.

“Womenspeak,” Darcie corrected.

Dylan gave her a dark look, his smile fading. He obviously had more than touching in mind. “We'd better go. I need to pack.”

Gran quickly agreed. “You two need to be alone. Julio and I spend as much time together as we can. Of course he lives right here in New York, in my own duplex—”

“Julio moved in with you?”

“Last week. Perhaps the thrill has been too much for me and explains my little ‘episode' yesterday.”

“I doubt it,” Dylan said, grinning. “You could show us a thing or two.”

“I'll be glad to. Anytime. Just call first—”

“Next time I'm in the States.”

“Ah,” Eden murmured, looking pleased. “And when will that be?”

“When Darcie invites me.” So he was going to play hardball.

She marched to the door. “I'm leaving before this conspiracy gets worse. Gran, behave yourself. Give Julio my…love.” She crooked a finger at Dylan, who had bent to kiss Eden goodbye. She said something to him that Darcie couldn't hear. Then he straightened and crossed the room to her. “I'll call tomorrow, Gran,” she said. “Rest before you go home.”

Dylan tipped his Akubra to her and they left.

“What was that all about?” he said in the hall.

“Guess.”

“She thinks you should come to Australia, see how you like Rafferty Stud—”

“I like him very much.”

“The station, Matilda.” He stopped her to steal a kiss. “Eden thinks you should emigrate. See me every day. Think about babies…” He gave her another long, hot, melting kiss Darcie couldn't resist. “I agree with her,” he whispered against her lips.

 

“Sandbagged,” Darcie said to herself.

The next morning she watched Dylan toss underwear into his bag, lying open on her bed.

He wasn't as backward as she'd once imagined, but he still had a long way to go in his attitude toward men and women. Like Hank, with Janet. Darcie had to keep that in mind, or she'd be on her knees begging him to stay.

Dylan's gaze fixed on his suitcase. “I can still get you a ticket.”

“This late? It would cost the earth. I couldn't even pay my rent.” She couldn't pay it all anyway.

“
I'll
buy the ticket.” His mouth hardened. “If you'd come with me, you wouldn't need to pay rent. I own the station free and clear.”

“So your mother and I can stay as long as we want?”

Dylan closed the suitcase with a snap.

“As long as
you
want?” Darcie added.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

She could be stubborn, too. “It means I'm not ready to change my whole life. It means I'm not going to spend it in the Outback with a man who thinks I should walk three paces behind him.”

He faced her, his eyes even darker. “I never said that.”

“But Dylan, that's how it would be. I'd turn into my own mother—and I'm not even sure what you're offering.”

“A free trip to Australia,” he said, looking mulish. He
did it well, and Darcie knew she was up against a brick wall. “After that, we'll see.”

“And if things didn't work out? I'd fly back to New York without a job waiting, or an apartment…” She hesitated. “I don't know if I'll ever want the traditional family you want, that my parents have had.”

“That bad?”

“No, but it's not for me. Not now. I've made that clear from the start.”

“And nothing has changed since we met in that bar?”

She recalled Dylan's words the other night.
We'll work it out.
And her own conjecture that maybe they could compromise. But this was all Dylan's show, his command request. Back to square one.

“I don't think so.”

“Wrong. You're not that naive.” Shaking his head, he avoided her gaze. “Well, since we're having a blue here—a fight—” Dylan hauled the bag off the bed and sent her a long look. “Know what I think?”

She was afraid to ask. Her throat wouldn't work. She was afraid for him to touch her. If he did, she'd give in.

“I think you're scared to death of life—and love. Do you care that much about defying your parents? Turning your back on your upbringing, your mother's way? Enough to risk your own happiness? With me,” he said, “or anyone else?”

“Dylan…”

He started for the door. “I don't have a Buckley's chance here.”

“What does
that
mean?” Even his slang pointed out their differences.

“No chance in hell, Matilda.”

The nickname nearly undid her. What if she never heard it again? She reached out a hand to him but missed. He was already halfway down the hall to the front door. Halfway out of her life. Was that what she wanted?

But Darcie felt no closer to defining life on her own, even if she lost Dylan now. Could two people even find happiness, together? she wondered.

“You're not being fair,” she said, following him when she knew she shouldn't. To her own ears, she sounded petulant. “Dylan, wait! You can't expect—”

He threw the words at her over his shoulder.

“If you want to talk, you know where to find me.”

 

When she saw Darcie weaving her way through the lunchtime crowd at Phantasmagoria, Claire felt her mouth turn down. Uh-oh. This wasn't good. Here she'd been feeling so pleased and positive, not obsessing at all. Now, she didn't know what to say except the obvious. “You look destroyed.”

“Me?” Darcie's expression perked up. “I'm fine. Never better.” Her smile turned dangerously bright. “This is the first day of the rest of my life, etcetera.” Claire fished in her bag for a tissue, just in case. “I think I'll have a T-shirt printed with that message.”

“Dylan went home.” Claire said it for her and Darcie sank onto a chair. Until that instant, Claire had thought she had life ironed out again. “You are in bad shape.”

Darcie picked up her menu. “No, really. I'm okay.” She studied the blank front page. “I mean, we had a great time. No denying that. But that's where it ends so he took a cab to JFK. Better for both of us.”

“You told him that?”

“Many times.”

“Darcie Baxter, you are an idiot. When does his flight leave?”

She didn't even have to check her watch. “Twenty minutes ago. He's probably right over our heads as we speak.” She listened for a moment. “Nope. No 747s roaring above the clouds. Must be headed toward Cincinnati by now.”

“Does he stop over there? You could get a Comair hop and meet him. Introduce him to your parents at the same time.”

Darcie's gaze fell again. “They're coming here to take Annie home. This isn't some movie like
An Officer and a Gentleman
with one of those dopey endings.”

“Richard Gere went after Debra Winger in that one.”

“You've been renting movies.”

“Every night. That is, when I'm not with Peter…”

Claire couldn't help it. The Cheshire grin broke across her face, in part as a diversion. Darcie shrieked, shattering the low conversations around them.

“You did it?
You did Peter?
”

The whole room turned to gape at them. Claire put her hand over Darcie's mouth. “Hush. You'll get us kicked out of here—and I'm starving. Let's order first. I'll give you the lurid details while your mouth's stuffed with shrimp salad and avocado.”

“I can't believe you screwed Peter the Great.”

“You should see
his
grin. Then you'd know.”

Darcie clutched her hand across the table. “Claire, I'm so happy for you. I was afraid you and Peter wouldn't make it.”

“Well. We did. Four times the first night.”

Darcie snickered. At least her face had lost that forlorn look.

“Can you walk?”

“Yes, I can walk, thank you very much. Just a little limp now,” she added. “Nothing serious. But permanent.”

Darcie laughed and everyone turned toward them again.

“We talked,” Claire said. Respecting Darcie's obvious heartbreak, she'd kept her news to herself as long as she could. “I'm going back to work.”