Improvise

by Melanie Rachel

  You okay?

  Not really. She felt like there were a million eyes on her. It was unsettling at best.

  Are you staying with Will?

  She smiled softly. Yes. Did he tell you?

  Yeah. Me and G. It read as though he approved. She hadn’t met Will’s sister, so she couldn’t say for sure about her.

  What could she say? K.

  The phone buzzed again. Is he there?

  He’ll be back in a few. Hopefully he wouldn’t be upset. This one was her fault.

  Steer into the skid.

  Good advice. But how? K.

  Richard stopped texting, and Elizabeth guessed he was contacting Will. She drew up her knees and crossed her arms over them, dropping her head and squeezing her eyes closed. Breathe, Bennet, she told herself sternly. People have cameras everywhere. It’s not a big deal.

  After a moment, she picked up her head and read the article accompanying the photo.

  Our royal couple is at is again, but NOW we know which Prince and Princess we’re following. They crossed the finish line together at the Camp Warwick Warrior Dash, but not before Cinderella lost her slipper and Prince Charming was required to chase her down to replace it. Of course, this slipper isn’t made of glass, and it’s six inches deep in mud, but could they be any sweeter? Keep reading this column to follow their happily-ever-after.

  Elizabeth moaned and pushed her phone away. There had been any number of times in the past few weeks she had truly regretted losing a hotdog eating contest to a woman no bigger than a pixie. This was by far the worst.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Elizabeth was in the middle of setting up an aggregator to push any future images or articles to her phone when the door opened. Will was talking to someone. She heard him setting something down on the kitchen island while he continued speaking.

  “Yeah, not too horrible, I guess,” he was saying, sounding irritated but not angry. He paused, listening, and then said tiredly, “Shut up, Richard.”

  Elizabeth smiled, though she didn’t much feel like it. I’m looking forward to having Richard back, she thought fondly. Some help teasing Will would be much appreciated. She considered how much attention she herself would be garnering from him and frowned. Then again . . .

  Will set down his phone and called out, “Food’s here!”

  She joined him in the kitchen. “Hey, Charming,” she said apologetically. “Guess I should have used fake names when I registered. With our names linked to our numbers, we were easy to find.”

  Will sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It could be worse,” he said grimly, then peeked up at her mischievously. “They could be calling me Cinderella.”

  She moaned loudly. “All those years of military training down the drain for a fairy godmother with severely limited magic and a carriage that smells like squash. Not the best exchange.” She worried about what her clients would say—nobody wanted Cinderella running their security. She hoped nobody important was reading the Post.

  “The horses are nice, though,” Will said, digging into the bag.

  “Oooh, Thai food!” exclaimed Elizabeth excitedly. “Did you get coconut soup?”

  “Did I get coconut soup?” he asked, feigning affront. He pulled out a container and set it in front of her. “It’s like you don’t know me at all.” He grinned. “By the way, it’s called Tom Kha Gai.”

  She grinned. “Whatever.” She laid her head partially on her arm, cheek pressed against the cool stone counter. “Kit and Lydia are super excited about this tabloid business. It’s gaining them all sorts of ‘popular by proximity’ points with their crowd at school.”

  “That’s a lot of alliteration for one sentence,” Will replied, removing the other cartons and setting the bag aside.

  “Nerd,” she said fondly, raising her head. “Kit had already asked me to volunteer for some career day thing next week. I told her I would, so I guess I can expect lots of phone pics there.” She glanced, askance, at Will. “Though since you won’t be there, maybe it won’t be so bad.”

  “I beg your pardon?” he asked, lifting both eyebrows.

  “Well,” she snickered, filling a bowl with some of the soup and grabbing a spoon, “who wants pictures of Cinderella without Prince Charming?”

  “Charming,” Will sighed, shaking his head. “Richard gave me grief about that. Of all people to wind up with that moniker, you’d think I’d be dead last.”

  “Why?” Elizabeth asked as she lifted a spoonful of soup to her mouth.

  Will stared at her. Her expression was curious but not teasing. She’s serious. He deliberated about that. By the time he opened his mouth to respond, Elizabeth had set her spoon back in her bowl and was patiently waiting for him to speak.

  Will cleared his throat and reached for the noodles. “You know how I spoke about you at the interview?”

  “You mean the non-interview?” Elizabeth asked, confused.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, yes, I remember. Donkey boy came out to play. I still think of you as the surly CEO, you know. But that’s not you.”

  Will winced. “No, I have to say donkey boy is pretty much my real personality.” He opened one of the cartons and spooned some vegetables onto his plate.

  Elizabeth laughed disbelievingly, filling her plate with chicken, vegetables, and a summer roll before picking up her spoon again. “No, he’s not.” She carefully swallowed the soup and hummed a happy little tune.

  “Sadly, he is. You can ask Richard or my sister.”

  “You’re like that with them?” Elizabeth asked doubtfully.

  Will shook his head. “No, no. Just with people I don’t know well. Or don’t like. Which, when you add them together, is nearly everyone. I mean, I can fake it with clients because there’s a defined topic, but I am definitely not the face of the company.”

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “I suppose the long and short of it is that people tend not to be genuine around me,” he replied, trying to sound nonchalant. “It’s too difficult to try to tease out who’s for real and who just wants money or social cachet or something I haven’t even considered yet.”

  “Social cachet,” Elizabeth repeated quietly. What a lonely way to live. Finally, she shrugged. “So dressing you down in front of your assistant actually recommended me to you?”

  You can dress me down anytime, he thought, dress me up, undress me. Instead, he gave her a little smile. “Yep.” He saw her inquisitive expression and explained, “If you were there to convince me to do something for you, you’d have done whatever you needed to do to keep that interview. Instead, you told me to get over myself, gave me a death glare, and walked out.” He got himself some water and sat down. “Of course, not before very politely thanking my assistant for arranging the appointment.”

  Her lips twisted in consternation. “I can’t see it, but if you say so.” She reached over the counter with her chopsticks to take some noodles from his plate and drop them in her mouth.

  “You know,” he complained, “there’s an entire container of noodles right in front of you.”

  “But it’s more fun to take yours,” she said with an impish smile.

  “Okay,” he replied, reaching for her soup.

  She positioned her upper body to block her bowl. “Not the soup,” she said threateningly, brandishing her spoon. “Soup is out of bounds.”

  He smiled and speared some of the chicken from her plate, which she observed without comment. They ate in companionable silence for a bit.

  “When Richard called to ask if I’d seen the paper, I thought he was talking about Bulgaria,” Will said, shaking his head. “Only in America does a muddy sneaker take precedence over five million people having their personal information hacked.”

  “Yeah, I saw that too,” Elizabeth replied. “I’m betting on an inside job. The Bulgarian systems aren’t a soft touch.”

  Will popped a piece of chicken into his mouth and chewed though
tfully. He swallowed and said, “Can you imagine getting your data stolen from the IRS? I mean, you can’t just say ‘I’m not filing my taxes until you improve security.’ Not unless you want to go to jail.” He lifted his beer. “What a nightmare.”

  She lifted her shoulders then let them drop. “It happened to twenty-six million vets who used the VA back in 2006, and still very little’s been done to make those systems more secure.” She ate more of the soup and then put down her spoon. He looked up at her and she smiled. “You know,” she said, changing the subject, “it makes me feel good that you’re different with me.”

  He grinned widely, “So you believe me now?”

  Elizabeth reached over to place her hand on top of his. Her green eyes gazed up at him. “I believe you. But you’ll always be Prince Charming to me.”

  “And you’ll always be my Cinderella,” he replied, with an expression of innocence plastered on his face as he continued to eat.

  Her eyes narrowed, and she frowned. “Serves me right for being sweet.”

  “Yeah,” Will said, mouth full of noodles, “you can’t really pull it off.”

  Will was in his study working on one of the proposals he’d come home with, and Elizabeth found herself pulling on a sweatshirt and walking outside to the terrace. The temperature had dropped precipitously, putting a decisive end to the warm weather the area had been enjoying. Now it feels like fall, she thought, remembering the glossy beauty of the autumnal leaves and the forested paths around the Bennet home in Meryton. It had been a farm once, but the acreage hadn’t been worked in that way for two generations. The house was paid for, and her father had leased land to several business concerns, including a wedding organizer, a photographer, and a local horse breeder to fund upkeep and property taxes. That income, in addition to his salary from the university and a trust fund from his parents, was all they had required. Some of the land had been sold, but most had been maintained, making it a wonderful place to be a child.

  Despite the way her childhood had ended, she had many fond memories of living at Longbourn. She’d loved growing up in the country, hiking, riding horses, swimming at the country club pool and the local swimming hole in the summers. She wondered whether the tire swing in the front yard was still operational or whether the rope had at last given out. Her father had hung it up for her and Jane when Mary was born, and they’d made good use of it.

  She checked her watch. Will had said he’d work for a few hours, so she figured she had at least another hour left. She pulled out her phone and hit speed dial. A sleepy voice answered.

  “Fitzwilliam.”

  “Whoops. Sorry,” Elizabeth said apologetically. “I forgot about time zones.”

  “Bennet?” she heard him sitting up, imagined him rubbing his eyes. “Everything okay?”

  She fought the urge to send him back to bed and end the call. “What do you know about Charles Bingley?” she blurted out.

  “Uh,” Richard said slowly, “you mean Batboy?”

  Is he awake? “What?”

  “Sorry.” He yawned. “Will always wanted to be Batman as a kid.”

  No way. “You’re joking.”

  She heard a soft chuckle. “No. The wealth of knowledge I have on that man is truly astonishing.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes lit up. “We’ll have to canvas that subject when you get back. But if Will is Batman, wouldn’t Bingley be Robin?”

  Richard cleared his throat. “Whatever. Is Bingley giving you problems?”

  She hesitated. What had Charles done, really, other than be a nuisance and ogle Jane? “Not really, but he ordered a background investigation on me. If it had been Will who ordered it, I don’t think it would have bothered me as much.”

  “It still would have bothered me,” Richard replied.

  “Well, okay,” Elizabeth reluctantly admitted, “it did, a bit, after I thought about it. But it would have been worse if Will hadn’t told me about it right away.” She sighed. “I want Will to feel comfortable, to know I’m not out to get his money or anything. If this is what it takes . . .”

  “Then he’s an idiot.”

  She laughed a little, then, relieved. “There seems to be some of that going around,” she confessed, thinking about using Will’s real name at the race. “I suppose it might be for the board more than for Will. It’s just that I get a strange read on Charles. He’s charming and my aunt says he’s funny, but what’s his story?”

  Richard grunted. “You realize I’m not even in the same country. You have a better sense of him than I would.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “Consider this my background check on him.”

  Richard sounded clearer now. “Well, my admittedly biased read has always been that he’s not dangerous, just young. Even for his years. But he thinks he knows everything. Wants to be treated like an equal.”

  “He’s not acting like an equal,” she said defensively. “He’s giving Will a lot of grief, actually. And he’s not young. He’s older than I am.”

  “Bennet,” Richard said tiredly, “there’s hardly a Marine alive who isn’t older than Bingley. But you were born older.”

  “No,” she replied instantly in a low voice, not sure herself why she was so adamant. “I was built that way.”

  She could almost see Richard rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to figure that out. After a few seconds, he responded, “I’ve not been impressed, though he’s good at the business end of things, and Will likes him. He was Will’s first real protégé, and he’s got the gift of gab that Will doesn’t.”

  Elizabeth was surprised by this. “Will doesn’t have a problem talking to people.”

  This produced a barking laugh. “‘Richard’s cast-off’ ring any bells?”

  “Well, okay,” she admitted. “But when he’s not p—” She bit her lip. “—Angry at you, he’s smart, and funny, and mostly relaxed . . .” Playful. Romantic. She recalled what Will had said at dinner, about how the arrogant man she’d met at the aborted interview was the real Will. If he had to run investigations before he could convince himself that a woman cared for him and not what he could give her, it was no wonder he had to put up a front. Still, he couldn’t be that conceited, arrogant man and still be the caring, kind, wickedly humorous man he was with her. Maybe he’d used the front so much he’d forgotten. The very idea made her feel a bit forlorn on his behalf.

  This silence was longer. Elizabeth was about to ask if Richard was still there when he finally spoke. “I think I need to view this phenomenon in person before I comment, Bennet. Nobody, not even Will’s sister, has ever said that about him before, and G idolizes him. Or did, until she decided he was cramping her style. Either he’s had a personality transplant, or the man’s in love.”

  “I hope it’s the latter,” she quipped, trying to get off the topic. Maybe he just feels safe to be himself with me, she thought. I love him. I’m sure of it now. Not even the background check made me question him. I’m just not sure he feels the same way. He said he’s serious, but what does that mean, exactly? She’d never had anyone be serious about a relationship with her before. She didn’t want to read too much into it in case she was wrong. Her heart, though . . . her heart wasn’t listening to her head.

  Richard took this as his cue to end the conversation, but Elizabeth was left with the impression that he wasn’t fooled.

  She wandered back into the house and spied her boxes of computer equipment by the door. She picked up one box and headed for the stairs. She’d agreed to stay for the two weeks Will was off work, so she might as well set up a work space. It made sense, since they intended to be doing things together every day, but she was determined to return to her apartment afterward. She didn’t want Charles Bingley or anyone else to get the idea that she was looking for a free ride.

  Elizabeth tried to stretch her legs. “I have too much energy,” she complained. “I’ve been inside all day. I need to walk. Or run.” She took Will’s hand. “Can we go pick up a pair of running shoes tonight
?”

  “Well,” Will said, checking his watch, “we do have an appointment to make.”

  Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged. “An appointment for what?” I need to move.

  His eyes were dancing. “For shoes.”

  “Will,” Elizabeth said slowly, as though he was confused, “you don’t need an appointment to buy running shoes.”

  He smiled enigmatically and would say no more.

  Thirty minutes later, he was pulling the Audi into a parking garage and walking her to a storefront with a sign identifying it as JackRabbit Sports. Elizabeth bounced up and down on the balls of her feet.

  “Now this is my kind of place,” she gushed.

  Will rolled his eyes. “Got it. No Tiffany’s. JackRabbit instead.”

  Elizabeth didn’t respond, just walked to the door and then turned to face him, disappointed. “They’re closed.”

  Will smiled and shook his head at her fallen expression. He took her chin in his hand and touched her bottom lip lightly with his thumb. “Don’t pout.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “I don’t pout.” She pulled away from his hand and started to walk back to the parking garage when Will grabbed her arm. She turned to tell him to leave her alone when she saw an employee open the locked door. Appointment, she thought, and would have slapped her forehead if she didn’t think Will would laugh at her.

  “Rich boys,” she muttered, brushing past him, but stopped to smile at the employee, a woman about her age dressed in black workout clothes.

  “Good evening, Mr. Darcy,” the woman called. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Thanks, Megan,” Will replied seriously. “I owe my friend here a pair of shoes.”

  Megan smiled and ushered them in.

  Friend? Elizabeth couldn’t help feeling a tiny twinge of jealousy when Megan gazed at Will when she thought nobody was looking. The woman was on the short side, but fit and pretty. She flipped her red hair and even tried batting her eyes once, but to Elizabeth’s great satisfaction, Will didn’t seem to notice.