by Jill Shalvis
of hug that suggested familiarity.
Whatever. So AJ and Ariana had had a thing. Everyone knew that. They were well suited, what with AJ’s calm, stoic attitude and Ariana’s calm inner spirit. Hell, maybe they were still having a thing. Truth was, AJ had lots of things, with lots of women. That’s what happened when you had that whole badass thing going on. Women tended to be stupid when it pertained to big and badass.
Herself included.
No matter that she told herself she preferred sweet and gentle, the truth was that she wouldn’t mind being a little stupid with someone big and badass and sexy as hell. Problem was, she wasn’t exactly at her sexiest, and hadn’t been for a while. She walked like Lurch from The Addams Family, she was mean as a snake from not sleeping more than a few hours at a time due to the pain, and though she liked the thought of having wild monkey sex, the actual mechanics of it were undoubtedly beyond her now.
Bending, she grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder before starting to rise carefully back up. This was always the tricky part because when she didn’t pay attention, her right leg tended to buckle and she often ended up face-planting.
She’d done so just last week at the grocery store checkout in front of the really cute checker, going down like a sack of potatoes. Even more mortifying, the cute checker had crouched at her side and said, “Ma’am, I’ve called the ambulance, stay real still.”
Ma’am.
He’d thought her old enough to be called ma’am, and hell, she’d certainly felt old. It had been a blow to her ego because there’d been a time when she could’ve batted her lashes, flashed a smile, and caught any guy she wanted, young or old.
Now? She didn’t even have the energy for a self-serve in her own shower.
So yeah, she’d fall in front of an audience again over her own dead body, especially an audience that included the guy who’d probably give her a new list of strengthening exercises to do every day and then watch over her like a drill sergeant.
But before she could make the careful struggle, a large hand appeared in front of her face. Reaching out, she gripped AJ’s hand, using it as a lifeline.
He didn’t let go right away, either, just squeezed his fingers in hers, setting his other hand on the curve of her waist to help her gain her balance, silently reminding her to put equal weight on both feet. She concentrated hard, her gaze up as he’d taught her. Feel the equilibrium.
The directives had been drilled into her by AJ himself, who stood there quietly, respectfully letting her get to it by herself on her own timetable.
The opposite tactic of Xander. While he had a lot of really great qualities, patience wasn’t one of them. He’d been known to pick her up, toss her in a fireman’s hold, and carry her where he wanted to go rather than wait for her to get there herself.
It never failed to piss her off.
At least Ariana had moved off and no one was staring at her struggling. She hated that most of all—the sympathetic gazes. Hated. That was one thing AJ had never done: pity her.
Piss her off? Oh yeah. But not pity her. She supposed he got Brownie points for that. “I’m good,” she said.
“I know.”
He could be such an annoying alpha pain in her ass, but it was in moments like these that she realized just how important his steady, imperturbable disposition was, and had been, to her recovery.
He’d given her back her life.
And her dignity.
Damn him all to hell. “Well,” she said, blowing out a breath and relaxing a bit. “This has been fun.”
“Liar.”
She choked out a laugh. “You know, I’m always a little bit disappointed when someone calls someone a liar and their pants don’t catch on fire.”
His eyes smiled. “You want my pants to catch on fire?”
Not going there … “Any special reason why you were intimidating Xander back there?” she asked. “Or was it just for sport?”
AJ’s gaze slid away to take in the retreating man in question, who’d been stopped by Ariana to talk. “You think I intimidated him?”
“Like you, he’s hard to intimidate,” she said. “But unlike you, he’s afraid of me and my wrath so he backed off.”
“And you don’t think I’m afraid of you?” he asked.
Valid question. As far as she knew, just about everyone was afraid of her. Crazy Darcy. Bitchy Darcy. Wild Darcy. But she slowly shook her head. “I don’t think you’re afraid of anything,” she said.
The corners of his mouth curved as if her statement amused him, but also maybe wasn’t quite accurate. But she sincerely couldn’t imagine the big, built, ex-military man standing in front of her being afraid of a damn thing.
And anyway, why was he here talking to her? He rarely did unless he had to. “Did you need to talk to me about work?” she asked.
“No. Well, yes, kind of,” he said. “I’m going to Boise this weekend.”
“To meet up with your potential grant sponsor. I e-mailed you all the hotel and registration info, for both you and Seth. It’s a retreat weekend, did you know that? It’s some big team-building thing for all the guy’s employees. Be prepared for Seth to freak out when he sees how many people will be there.”
“Yeah, about that …” AJ rubbed a hand over the sexy scruff on his jaw and it made a sound that reminded her how it felt to have a man kiss her. All over.
Damn, she missed sex.
“Seth already freaked out,” AJ said.
“Uh-oh.” She tried to read him but he could be military stoic and impenetrable when he wanted, giving nothing away. “What happened?”
“He said that he can’t be on display.”
Ah. Now she knew why he was still standing there talking to her. “Sounds like a problem for you,” she said slowly.
“Yes. It is.”
She stared at him some more, thinking, Oh hell no. Then she said it out loud just in case her expression wasn’t clear enough. “Oh hell no, AJ.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it,” she said, pointing at him. “You want me to go instead.”
“I do,” he said calmly.
She didn’t realize she was shaking her head in the negative until he spoke.
“You’ve got an amazing comeback story,” he said. “And since I was your PT, I can personally attest to your recovery and exactly how amazing it was.”
“You want to profit from that?”
“No,” he said, his voice still perfectly even, but something flashed in his eyes.
Disappointment?
Hurt?
“I want others like you to profit from it,” he said. “With donations for grants, I can help more people when their insurance cuts them off before they’re ready to stop PT.”
Emotion swamped her, unexpected and hot. Shame. A man like AJ would never try to profit off another. Never. “I’m sorry,” she managed. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said—”
“It’s just one night,” he said, clearly not wanting or needing her apology. “Just a dinner. I’ll help you through it.”
“But—”
“You don’t want to be on display, either,” he said. “I get it.”
No, she didn’t want to be on display. So badly she didn’t. She still felt self-conscious when her sister and brother watched her walk, much less other people. And talking about her accident and the recovery? Her biggest nightmare.
And yet he wanted her to do exactly that, where so many strange sets of eyes would be on her.
Horror. “No—”
“I’ll pay you,” he said, still quiet, still calm in the face of her panic.
She just stared at him.
“Cash. A thousand bucks. That’s enough for what, three dogs?”
Her mouth fell open. “Yeah, but … why? Why would you pay me?”
“Because you have a cause, and I’m a sucker for a cause that involves anything with four legs.”
Oh, damn. Damn, that
was a good answer.
He looked at the time on his phone. “I’ve gotta go. Think about it and let me know.”
And then he was gone.
One night, she told herself. One dinner. And in return, money for more dogs.
How hard could it be?
She was afraid she knew the answer to that question.
That night she lay facedown on the tattoo table, her Queen tank top rolled up to just beneath her breasts, holding her breath as Xander worked his magic.
“Breathe, sweetness,” he said.
“Can’t.” Her fingers were wrapped around the edges of the table so tight she was probably leaving permanent indentations. “Holy … crap,” she gasped. “Holy effing crap.”
He stopped the torture, aka the tattoo he was creating alongside the scar from her spinal surgery.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to try to cover the scar instead of going parallel to it?” he asked. “It’d be difficult to get rid of it entirely but I could cover it pretty significantly.”
“No.” She held up a hand when he turned his tat gun on again. “Not yet!”
He blew out a sigh and leaned back to give her a longer break, handing over a bag of Gummy Bears—was he a good friend or what?
“It’s not that painful,” he said. “And piercings are worse, and you’ve willingly pierced just about everything on your body.”
“A very long time ago,” she pointed out and tore into the bag. “When I was young and stupid.” She’d long since taken out most of the piercings, way too much upkeep. “And I was intoxicated for all of them.”
“You went through how many surgeries?”
“Those don’t count, either,” she said, painstakingly pulling out the green Gummy Bears for consumption first since they were her faves. She’d eat the reds next and then the whites. She didn’t acknowledge the yellows because they tasted like furniture cleaner, though in a pinch she’d eat them anyway. “I was under anesthesia so they didn’t hurt at all.”
“Recovery hurt,” he said. “PT hurt. Having your parents not even come home from Somalia to see you in the hospital hurt.”
Okay, so maybe that had hurt. Though it really shouldn’t have. She’d long ago gotten used to being an afterthought, a throwaway. “I had my brother and sister,” she said. “And you.”
Their gazes met. They’d been friends for years, though they’d only recently connected again, ever since she’d found herself grounded in Sunshine for the past eleven months.
Xander had grown up here. After high school he’d backpacked through Europe before returning to his roots to take over his father’s tattoo business.
Darcy’s roots weren’t connected to a place but to Wyatt and Zoe. And Xander, too, even though he’d been looking at her lately with much more than sibling-like feelings. Oddly enough, neither of them had ever acted on that, though most people in town thought otherwise. But she’d not been feeling well enough, and anyway, Xander almost always had a woman hanging around. Or several. Except, come to think of it, he hadn’t had anyone around lately.
He was a damn good-looking guy, all long and lanky and lean, and badass, too, with all the tats and leather and shitkickers. So yeah, maybe she could see why people had assumed she’d dipped her toes in those waters.
But she wasn’t ready.
“Why not?” he asked, voice low and a little rough, making her realize she’d spoken out loud.
She sucked in a breath. “Well, for starters,” she said, her voice low, too, “my body still looks like Frankenstein’s monster.”
To his credit, his gaze didn’t sweep downward to look, but instead remained on her eyes. “Your body is perfect,” he said with nothing but sweet sincerity.
It wasn’t often he did sweet, and that moved her. But she shook her head. “Okay, so I feel like Frankenstein’s monster,” she said. “I can’t control much—”
He shook his head. “Excuses.”
True enough. They both knew she wasn’t embarrassed in the least by her scars. In fact, it was the opposite really. Her scars represented something to her. They represented her change. BS—before scars—she hadn’t cared for herself all that much. She never gave her safety, or her future for that matter, any thought at all. She’d not had a death wish or been depressed, but she hadn’t really seen herself getting old. She’d lived in the moment, always. Sometimes the moment had involved hanging off a mountain by a rope covering some new adventure for Nat Geo. And sometimes that moment had meant swimming with sharks off a South Pacific reef for the Travel Channel.
But something weird happened to a person when they nearly bought the farm. Turned out your life really did flash before your eyes. And in her case, all her adventures had as well. That’s when she’d realized—almost all of those adventures had been experienced alone.
When she’d opened her eyes in the hospital, and then had faced all those long months of staring up at the ceiling while her body healed, she’d decided she had things to work on. Things that included learning to not only like herself, but to love herself as well.
She’d been working on the like thing, and was starting to have some success. But the love thing … that was taking a little bit longer. Hence the real reason she wasn’t sleeping with Xander. In her heart of hearts she knew he was falling for her and she refused to hurt him unless she knew she could fall for him back.
As for the new tattoo … No, she wasn’t being selfdestructive. Nor would she ever cover her surgical scars. Instead she wanted to complement it with her tattoo, which read in small, beautiful script: I am the hero of my story, I don’t need to be saved.
She wanted to remember that every single day.
Xander was still just looking at her, clearly waiting for her to say something he’d actually understand, so she took his hand and brought it to her heart. “You’re a good guy, Xander.”
He stared at her. “Ah, fuck.” He dropped his head to his chest on a low laugh. “The good guy speech.” He lifted his head again. “If your next line is that I have a good personality, just kill me now.”
“You do have a good personality,” she insisted.
“Like a dagger,” he said, and mimed being stabbed, but then he squeezed her fingers affectionately.
“And anyway,” she said, squeezing him back, “you don’t really want me.”
Now he let his gaze meander down her body and his eyes heated. “Wanna bet?”
She smiled. “I’m talking about the me on the inside. I’m still a bitch, Xander. I mean I’m working on it, but I’m not going there with anyone right now, not until I’m ready.”
At that, he brought their entwined fingers up to his mouth and brushed a kiss over her knuckles. “You are a bitch,” he said with great fondness. “But I love that about you. And I’m a patient man. I can wait. Now lie down and suck it up. I’m on the clock.”
She settled back on the table, relieved at the lack of awkwardness between them. She knew most women would say she was nuts. Being with Xander would be good. And easy.
And once upon a time that had been all she needed. Good and easy.
But it no longer felt like enough. His friendship meant too much to her. And she might be reckless, or at least have a reputation for it, but she was no longer stupid or thoughtless.
“Damn,” she gasped as the sting of the tat gun hit her again. “Damn, shit, hell—”
“Deep breaths,” he told her. “That’s it, just keep breathing for me.”
“Hey, man, you busy?”
At the sound of his brother Tyson on the other side of the privacy curtain, Xander lifted the tat gun off Darcy’s skin. “In the middle of a tat for Darcy,” he said.
Silence.
For whatever reason, Tyson had instantly decided way back when that he didn’t like her, and it had stuck.
Xander sighed. “What do you need, Ty?”