God, this man’s support just slayed her. But as encouraging as that sounded, Beck was taking the product-of-her-environment argument a little too far. She owed nothing to her father. He had no say in how she turned out, yet . . . they were alike in so many ways. Stubborn, unyielding, hardheaded. She wanted to heal the rift between them, not go through life with this ball of negativity like a dead weight in her chest.
They were silent for a few moments, the air heavy with their thoughts and the chain saw’s whine as it cut through the ice.
“You’re pretty good at this,” she finally murmured.
“Uh-huh. PG.”
Her scarf was moved aside to reveal skin for a sensual nip of her neck. So not PG.
“I meant that you’re good at seeing the silver lining, making the best of any situation.”
“It’s the foster kid code. We live in the now, take the scraps, and hope to God some miracle can turn it into a five-course meal. Shifting your perception, choosing to take a situation that makes you afraid or hurt or angry, and see it differently—that’s the best way to move forward.”
Her Beck had become quite chatty over the years. Insightful, too. “Look at you being all wise and shit,” she said.
He grinned. “I know, right?”
“You own a suit, Mexican Dempsey?” Grams piped up, having just woken from her power nap.
“Does a birthday suit count?”
“Get one. Darcy needs a date to the fund-raiser.”
Darcy mimicked strangling her grandmother. “Grams, I can get my own dates, thanks very much! Also, his name is Beck Javier Rivera and he’s Puerto Rican, not Mexican, which you well know.” With an embarrassed head shake, she turned to find him beaming a sexy grin. Yum. “Friday at the Drake. You in?”
Surprise lit up his eyes like stones in a stream. “As my hearing has yet to be scheduled and I’ve already finished Grand Theft Auto—twice—I’m all yours.”
Waiting around for the call on his hearing was driving the poor guy screwy, but Darcy was reaping the benefit while he spent his free time with her. As for the fund-raiser, it would be a fitting punctuation to what had been an unexpectedly wonderful couple of weeks.
Something lurched in her chest at that.
He nuzzled her cold nose. “I’m all yours, not just on Friday night, but every night you want me.”
“Beck . . .”
Another kiss swallowed her protest, an invasive sweep of his tongue as he breathed his promise into her lungs.
And she let him, because it was just easier to give him his way in this. For now.
chapter 8
The next afternoon, Darcy shifted her weight back on the tattoo parlor’s stool and snapped a few mental candids for her memories. No one filled out the chair quite like Beck. Those beefy arms, strapping thighs, and well-built shoulders—he was every inch the powerful fighting machine.
“Can’t believe that fur ball of piss ’n’ vinegar is still around,” he said, jerking a chin in the direction of her cat, Mr. Miggins, who was curled up in a sated ball near the hissing radiator. The two had never been fans of each other.
“He’s like Grams. He continues out of spite.”
Smiling, Beck returned his gaze to his arm and scrutinized Darcy’s work. The green shamrock, like a pulsing Irish heart, bloomed on his bicep above the name of his foster father, Sean. Relatively simple in design, it might not impress her usual clientele, but pride swelled her chest at the thought of helping this amazing man commemorate his fallen heroes.
“You like?”
“I love.” He raised his eyes to snag hers as he said that. Intense, blue, romantic—and a hundred times steadier than her heartbeat.
I love.
And she did. Completely, utterly, and . . . she was not happy about it. Not at all. Every day with Beck dragged her deeper and tore her under a powerful current until she could barely breathe for wanting him.
Happy Frickin’ Holidays, Darcy!
Occupying her hands would be her best play here, and though they itched to meander south and stroke the perma-boner Beck always seemed to sport around her, she reined in her inner minx and reached for a bandage.
Beck was staring again. “How are you fixed for Christmas Day?”
One more week to the holiday, and then a few days later, bye-bye, Chicago.
Bye-bye, Beck.
“I’ll drive Grams over to Dad’s, we’ll scarf turkey while Tori tries to chitchat through the awkward silences, and then I’ll drop Grams back off at prison—I mean rehab.”
He cocked his head. “You want to come hang at the firehouse after? Gage is gonna Martha Stewart the hell out of the dinner. He’s already making paper plate angels for all the place settings. An inordinate amount of glitter is involved.”
She stood and tidied up her station, extracting ink needles and lobbing soiled tissues into the trash.
“I’ll be so busy with getting Grams settled and tying up loose ends.” Such as loading up her piece-of-shit car. Steeling herself for the journey ahead to the job she wasn’t sure she cared about anymore. Holding her ribs while her heart broke into icy shards.
Her body stilled as his masculine heat blanketed her from behind. “Querida, it doesn’t have to end.”
“We’ll have the fund-raiser on Christmas Eve, Beck. It’ll be a nice way to say good-bye.”
With a strong hand on her shoulder he turned her to face him. Those eyes blazed hard and furious, shining like bullets.
“Is that why you invited me? So you could say adios in a room full of blinged-out strangers. We’d eat some rubbery chicken and dance a sad old waltz, though God knows I’ll be crap at that. Maybe you’d get a final fuck-you in at your dad because you brought that guy he hated, then you’d wave to me as you wheeled Eleanor out the door.”
Burning emotion snarled beneath her breastbone. Damn him for making it so hard. “I was never going to stay, Beck. You knew that. I just can’t make a life for myself in the same place as my father.”
Storm clouds brewed in his eyes, myriad emotions battling beneath his usually calm surface. Kinetic energy seemed to bounce off the walls, in her chest, between their bodies.
“That’s just an excuse. So he screwed you over and you’re still pissed. Time to grow up, princesa, and figure out where you’re going instead of dwelling on where you’ve been.” He scrubbed a hand over his close-cropped skull. “You can’t deny what’s happening here with us.”
“Of course not. But it’s just chemistry, lust, nostalgia, whatever you want to call it—” She carved the air with her hand, seeking the right words to minimize the outrageous potency of what existed between them. “I’ve come too far in my career and my life to throw it all up for the special feelings caused by a return to the good old days. Besides, you had no problem letting me go before.”
“That was different.”
“How? How was it different?” She had never pried about his reasons—he hadn’t given her any insight at the time, and she had always ascribed it to the bad space he was in after Sean and Logan made the greatest sacrifice. Preferring not to know, if she was being honest.
“We were kids,” he murmured. “Now we’re all grown up.”
“You got over me, Beck.” A lot more easily than she recovered from the onslaught of him, she might add. “You threw me away seven years ago. It hurt. It really fucking hurt.”
Empathy laced with pain shone back in those terrible blue eyes.
“It was for the best. You know that.”
“I don’t know anything. Why was it for the best?”
He looked like he was weighing his options for evasion, when something clicked in his expression. Resignation. “I wasn’t good enough for you, Darcy. I was a street punk who wanted nothing more than to follow in my foster dad’s footsteps. Honest, hard, backbreaking work. Seeing you was like being blinded by a goddess. Touching your skin with my callused hands felt like sacrilege. Look at where you came from, at your people. How would I take ca
re of you right?”
“So you did care about me—”
“I fucking loved you!”
All strength fled her legs and she gripped the edge of the counter behind her. Hearing those words spoken with such passion, even in the past tense, made her woozy.
Then, angry.
“Yet you dumped me.”
“For your own good.”
Outrage rushed through her. “You—you decided that I would be better off without you. You made that decision. Not us.”
He snorted. He may as well have said duh. “Look at how it all worked out.”
Goddamn him. “You think this is all because of you? That because you threw me away, it allowed me to flower into the woman I am today?”
Silence. Oh, the arrogant prick.
“How does your big fat head not fall off?”
A hint of a smile on his lips greeted that. “I think getting out from under your father’s thumb was good for you. We were kids, half formed, clueless about who we were. You needed to experience the world. Earn your ink.” He waved a hand around the shop, the supposed fulfillment of all her dreams. “If we’d stayed together, what would have happened? You were talking about switching to a college in Chicago or taking a year off. Already compromising yourself, maybe your future, for nothing.”
Nothing? She would have had him, her serious boy with the shocking blue eyes. Beck was all she had needed back then.
“It wasn’t your choice to make,” she gritted out.
“Get real, Darcy. With me, you’d have been making happy noises while shriveling up inside because you didn’t get out there. Travel, learn, be. I was never going to leave Chicago. You would have hated me eventually.”
“And I hated you anyway.”
“Yep,” he said, and then he smiled again, a little sadly.
Confusion swirled in her chest, stopping to grasp at her heart with icy fingers. Since reconnecting with Beck, she had shied away from thinking about how they parted. Really thinking about it. Because if she truly gave that awful time the mental space it deserved, she’d remember the heartache and how it felt to be pushed aside.
Now to hear that he played the ultimate decider on this—his trust in her so negligible that her opinion never entered the equation—sliced through her like a blade. She had loved him so much, but his version held no respect.
Only a need for control.
“So what’s changed? Don’t say you’re suddenly good enough for me now that I’m not the Gold Coast princess anymore.” She held up her palms, stained from the tools of her trade. “Have my manual labor hands knocked me off that lofty pedestal, Beck?”
He glowered. “Stop twisting what I’m saying. It’s not how you start, it’s where you end up. This is where we are now and it’s worth fighting for.”
She drew herself taller, which was surprisingly difficult when your heart had stopped working properly. Thanks to her father, she had been there, done that, bought the I ♥ Assholes mug. She had almost collapsed under the weight of Sam Cochrane’s controlling hand—and damned if she’d let any man do that to her again.
“Make sure you put Bacitracin on that tattoo. Every day for a week.”
He stared at her, the notch between his brows deeply pronounced. “Darcy, don’t shut down on me now. Not when we’re so close.”
“Tell me this,” she whispered. “If you had to do it all over again, would you make the same choice?”
“In a heartbeat.” No hesitation, not a moment to consider. Of course, swift, brutal decisions were his bread and butter on the job. Why would his life be any different?
She could barely push the words through her rapidly constricting throat. “Just forget you ever met me, Beck.”
“That’s not likely now, is it? And not just because of this.” He touched the bandage over his tat, then grasped her hand and targeted his heart with their tangled fingers. “You’re in here, princesa. It broke me to give you up but I stand by it. You left scorch marks that never healed. And I don’t want them to.”
She extracted her hand from the heated cocoon of his. Stepped back. Inhaled . . . a shallow breath, because deep at this moment was impossible.
“Just go,” she choked out, turning her back on him like she had on her father, on her whole charmed life, all those years ago. Only back then, taking a stand had been the first step in Darcy becoming strong. Now, when ten seconds later the door to the parlor clicked shut, she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so weak.
chapter 9
Coffee shops. The last resort of the desperately single.” Mel cast her critical gaze around the busy Starbucks in Lincoln Square. “They used to be so promising. Now they’re filled with aspiring writers and wannabe day traders, frankly, the worst collection of talent I’ve come across in years.” Sighing, she sipped her skinny latte and eyed Darcy from beneath her golden lashes. “But that’s not why we’re here, is it.”
Darcy poked at the chocolate croissant she had bought in a fit of pessimism five minutes ago. Her third since walking into the aromatic, supposedly calming interior of the popular coffee place with Mel. Between the holiday excess and this Beck business, it looked like she’d be making her grand exit from the city ten pounds chunkier than when she arrived three months ago.
Or maybe all that extra weight could be attributed to her heavy heart.
“Well, I’d love to see you settled before I leave Chicago¸” Darcy said with fake cheer. Her disinterested gaze drifted to a salt-and-pepper-haired professorial type reading an actual newspaper. “Elbow Patches seems nice.”
“Lives with his mother.”
Undeterred, Darcy tried again. “That guy with the hipster hat and the sideburns is cute.”
“There are only so many microbrewery tours and ironic T-shirt shopping trips I can fit into my schedule.” Mel’s pixie features turned kindhearted. “Quit stalling. Time to discuss the man of the hour—or should I say the decade?”
Darcy gave her most Continental shoulder shrug, perfected during her time in Paris. “There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Right.” Mel stared Darcy down. “So how’s this going to end, D?”
The end was a done deal. Seven years ago. Again, two days before when she discovered Beck had cut her out of the decision to take the road to Splitsville. More men taking care of business for their women. Her father, Preston Collins, François, every guy she’d ever dated, really, and now Beck. She almost rolled her eyes at the canyon of self-pity his actions had opened up. Her heart was set to deluded, and now she wanted to wallow in her own stupidity for a while.
“It’s not going to end with me forgiving him.”
“Hmm. Men are just manipulating douche canoes,” Mel said in sympathy.
“Testify.”
“They leave the toilet seat up, can barely walk and chew gum at the same time—”
“Act like they know best,” Darcy cut in, getting warmed up.
“That’s their problem. They think they know best, but in this case . . . I have to agree.”
Darcy was stunned. “I can’t believe you’re taking his side.”
Mel blew out an oh-girlfriend sigh. “It was a long time ago and he was crazy about you. That’s gotta count for something.”
Darcy didn’t doubt Beck’s feelings for her all those years ago, but it was tainted, corrupted, ruined, by his high-handed behavior. What gave him the right to ride solo on such an important decision?
“I’ve spent the last few years building myself up. I can’t be with someone who doesn’t respect me. Who pays lip service to the notion of my strength but wants to pull the lever behind the curtain.”
“Like your dad.”
“What?”
“You know.”
She did. Every man who crossed her path was assessed with the checklist: was he bossy, manipulative, demanding, in any way like Sam Cochrane? One tick was enough to scuttle any potential relationship. But at the same time, she was drawn to decisive, confident men
. Men like Beck who knew what they wanted and fought with gloves on, fists raised, to make it a reality.
So sue her for being a girly mass of contradictions.
“You had to give him my address,” she said faintly, not quite ready to capitulate to common sense.
“Gage extracted it from me under false pretenses,” Mel said, as if Thor-lust could excuse her guilt. “Still can’t believe that hot piece of ass is gay. I weep for my fellow Vagina Americans.”
“I really loved him, Mel.”
“When?”
That pulled her up short. She had fallen in love with a serious boy that day in the boxing ring, and two weeks ago, fell right back into the Beck Rivera groove. The when wasn’t a fixed point in time. Her feelings for this man existed on a continuum.
She had never stopped loving him. Not for one second.
Mel gave a short nod as if Darcy had spoken that aloud. “You said you were over him. That you’d moved on and this was just a fling, revenge, whatever, to see you through the holidays. But you never got over him. Not really. And now you want to punish him for breaking your heart all those years ago instead of just accepting that shit happens, people make decisions for good or bad—” Darcy opened her mouth to object but Mel countered with the hand. “And that now he’s a different person. You’re a different person. He wanted the best for you, to make you happy in the long term because he was nuts about you. Best intentions, so-so methods.”
“You think I overreacted?”
Mel broke off a piece of Darcy’s croissant and popped it into her mouth. “Is that what you call it when you pick a fight?” she asked around her chewing. “ ’Cause that’s what you did, babe. All this time you didn’t want to know why he dumped you, but the minute it comes down to the wire, as soon as he pushes you to be brave, now you start channeling Countess Curiosity? You knew you wouldn’t like the answer, and it gave you the perfect out.”
Darcy hated that Mel was right. Damn her.
“I guess I panicked.”
“Yeah, you did. Loving this man is going to turn your life upside down and make you question everything. That’s a lot to take in if you’re not ready for it. I tell my students all the time that fear is often a good pointer to what we really want and need. If it’s outside your comfort zone, it’s going to be so much more rewarding when you pull it off. You have to feel it to heal it.”
Baby, It's Cold Outside Page 35