Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

by Gardiner, Jenny

  Her brother eyed Caroline with a leery glare, much like a cop would regard a shoplifting suspect. “How is it we haven’t heard anything about this friendship?”

  “Tut-tut, Edouardo. Don’t start with the interrogation tactics. Since when has Darcy ever told us anything about anyone he dates?” She caught herself and covered her mouth with her hands.

  “The better question is since when has Darcy ever dated?”

  Caroline jumped in. “Date? We’re not dates. I mean we don’t date. Make that we never have dated. Well, not exactly. We’re just friends. I’m just here to help.”

  “Like what kind of help?” he asked.

  Caroline blanched. “God, I have no idea. All I know is we were all talking yesterday, and the next thing you know everyone decided I would help Darcy. Really early in the morning, I might add.”

  “And getting back to that ‘not exactly,’” Edouardo said. “Either you dated or you didn’t. Which is it?”

  His sister threw him a dirty look. “Caroline was just telling me how she and Darcy teamed up to make sure things were on the up and up with Adrian when he ran away from home.”

  “I’m not sure ‘running away from home’ is the correct description for what Adrian did,” Caroline said, wondering how it was she came to be sticking up for him in the conversation. “I think he was just trying to get away for a bit.”

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to,” Edouardo said. “Tell me, what intentions do you have for my brother?”

  Caroline looked from Edouardo to Clementine, hoping like hell someone was about to crack a smile. Nada.

  “Uh... I’m not really clear on what you mean by that,” she said. “I’m not even sure why I’m here. Maybe you should ask your mother. I think it was her idea to start with.” Caroline was becoming more confused the more embroiled she became in the conversation.

  “Would you like some toast?” Clem asked, trying to divert the discussion.

  “Look, Clementine,” her brother said. “You’re not fooling me with the change of topic. I’m watching out for Darcy—”

  “Watching out for me because I’m incapable of watching out for myself?” A rather familiar male voice joined the conversation, and it stirred feelings Caroline hoped had dissipated. But no, her head put her right back on that beach and then in their cheesy maritime-themed hotel room with the clamshell-shaped bed.

  “The sleeping bear stirs,” his sister said. “Welcome to the world, sunshine.” She stood up and gave him a fat kiss on the cheek.

  Darcy rubbed his eyes with his fists, then ran his hands through his hair. “Just barely,” he said, awkwardly avoiding making eye contact with Caroline.

  “You see you have a helper here, anxiously awaiting her first assignment?” Edouardo said with a slight smirk and heavy emphasis on the word assignment.

  Darcy rolled his eyes. “I am so not in the mood for your snark this morning.” He gave a cursory nod to Caroline before turning to fix some tea. “Morning.”

  Caroline remained silent as she tried to sort out the subtext of all these conversations going on.

  “Darce, if I’d known you needed help, I’d have offered myself up for the project,” Clem said. “Except trust me, you don’t want my help.”

  “That goes without saying,” Darcy said. “I don’t hear your brother volunteering up his services, however.” He gave a nod to Edouardo, who stood nearby, shoveling oatmeal into his mouth.

  “Oh, you don’t want his interfering either,” their sister said. “You know Edouardo; all that’ll come of it is more work for you. He’ll make you crazy. And blame you for everything.”

  “It’s okay, I really don’t need any help,” Darcy said, taking a sip of his tea.

  Caroline mentally glared at him while forcing a half smile onto her face. She couldn’t let that one go, however. “So glad I dragged my ass out of bed before the birds were up this morning then.”

  Clementine reached across the table to put her hand on Caroline’s. “Pay no attention to my brother’s lack of manners. He always was the rough one in the family.” She poked Darcy in the ribs. “I’m sure Darcy will have all sorts of things for you to do, and I know you’ll be brilliant help. Speaking of, look at how the time has passed. You, my dear brother, best get a move on.” She clapped her hands for emphasis.

  With that, Clementine got up to leave, pulling Edouardo and his half-eaten oatmeal along with her. While Clementine never could lay claim to any sort of matchmaking skills, even she could tell the two of them had some talking to do, and she wanted no part of it whatsoever.

  Chapter Fourteen

  NOTHING more awkward than being left alone in the kitchen following the Spanish Inquisition—or would that be the Monafortian Inquisition?—with the object of your shame, who has absolutely no interest in you, Caroline thought.

  For a few minutes neither she nor Darcy spoke. All they could hear was the simmering of water in the nearby teakettle.

  Caroline didn’t know what to say or whether she was even allowed to be angry at Darcy under the circumstances. Isn’t it cruel to pile up on someone who’s in a state of bereavement? But then again, what a complete prat he’d been to her. She deserved better. Time to return to the normal Caroline and call him on it.

  “So, I’ve decided not to beat around the bush any longer,” she said. “I think you’ve been a real jerk.”

  Darcy did a double take, setting down his mug and just staring at her. “Now that’s what’s been missing from you,” he finally said. “That bulldog thing.”

  “Don’t try to woo me with your sweet talk, Darcy,” she said. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to just dust me off like unwanted dandruff on your suit jacket.”

  “Yes, that combative-bulldog thing,” he repeated. “I almost forgot about that.” He reached out for a lock of Caroline’s hair and stroked it for a minute.

  Caroline flinched and he let it drop.

  “Caro, I...” He stammered, not knowing what to say. “I don’t think I can properly explain myself to you. Because I don’t really understand it myself.”

  Caroline folded her arms across her chest and crossed her legs. If her body language didn’t send a message, nothing would, short of a smack upside the man’s head. “Well, feel free to try to explain then. I’m all ears.” She jiggled her foot back and forth, waiting impatiently to hear something good and hoping he wasn’t going to finalize the demise of their relationship.

  “Okay, so... In America we had fun.”

  Caroline nodded.

  “And even when you came back here, that was still great fun.”

  Caroline nodded again.

  “But then my father had his heart attack,” he continued. “And things went from bad to worse, you see. And I realized that all that time I was horsing around, having a happy-go-lucky time of it, unbeknownst to me, my father was living out the last days of his life. And it struck me that I shouldn’t have been indulging in selfish things like I was. I should have been here. I should have eased his burden, and maybe he’d not have died—” Darcy sighed as he began to pace the floor. “So I’m sure you’ll understand why I, why we, well, why we can’t be.”

  Caro’s eyes filled with tears, but she was damned if she was going to let him see it. She discreetly wiped away the damp in the corners of her eyes. She was certain this was about the stupidest excuse for a dumping she’d ever heard, but how could she refute it when it came from the heart? Did he truly believe he could have saved his father from dying had he been a more serious person? But it wasn’t her place to contradict him. It would only make things worse.

  “Look, Darcy,” she said, standing up, not knowing if she was about to leave or whether she should instead go find some coveralls to get mucking the stalls. “I understand that you are sad, that you miss your father terribly. I know you wish things had happened differently. It’s only natural. I’m sorry if you regret our time together. I kind of enjoyed it. And I’ll try very hard to
not let the fact that you wish it hadn’t happened affect my good memories of it.”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” he said. “I don’t regret you. I just regret the timing of things. I regret that I didn’t make more mature decisions that could have led to a better outcome.”

  “I think we were a pretty great outcome. But that’s just me.”

  Darcy reached out to Caroline and pulled her up against him, wrapping his arms around her, pressing her head to his shoulder. For a few minutes they just stood there, their breath in synch, feeling the pulse of their hearts beating. Caroline didn’t want to be the weak crybaby. It wouldn’t get her anywhere, plus it would look like she was having a little pity party. So not cool. But she couldn’t help but cry ever so silently, and she worried Darcy could feel the rise and fall of her shoulders with each quiet sob.

  Darcy reached down and pulled Caroline’s chin up with his fingertip. “Hey,” he said, his eyes fixed on hers, damp with tears. “I don’t want you to be sad. It’s not you, it’s me.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Funny thing—that doesn’t make it any better.”

  “You know I would have loved for us to keep going, don’t you? It’s just that now it’s time for me to do what’s right for everyone around me.”

  “And your being in a relationship is wrong for them?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He sighed. “It’s just complicated.”

  “It’s only as complicated as you make it, Darcy,” she said, then leaned in closer and stole a small kiss.

  Darcy’s eyes grew wide. And then he kissed her back, and this time it wasn’t small. He pressed his lips to hers, and his tongue followed her mouth to search for hers, and they tangled that way for a while, their breathing getting heavier with their bodies pressed up against each other. Darcy reached his hand around and slipped it beneath Caroline’s shirt, inching it along the soft terrain of her stomach until his hand reached its goal. Caroline moaned as his warm fingers roamed over her breasts, teasing her already-hard nipples while their kiss intensified. She pressed her pelvis forward, grinding into Darcy’s truest betrayal of his feelings, which was currently taking up plenty of space right at the juncture of her legs.

  It was Darcy’s turn to moan as he licked a path from her mouth to her ear, taking small nibbles on her earlobe as he stooped so that he could more easily follow that trail farther south. He lifted her shirt so that all that was covering her was a tiny melon-colored push-up bra that was doing a fine job at its appointed purpose.

  Darcy planted small kisses along Caroline’s neck and continued moving downward till he finally had to turn them both around so that he could park himself on the upholstered seat at the breakfast nook in order to get to where he wanted to be. He pulled down the lace cup of the bra, exposing her nipple to his hot breath before taking it into his mouth and suckling on her.

  Caroline’s fingers worked their way across his head, and she tried to reach farther down, but from that vantage point she had few options. Instead she pressed her leg in against the bulge in his pants. Their breath came loud and uneven and Caroline’s even more so when Darcy’s other hand reached down to unbutton her pants and found its way to her very warm, very wet center. Caroline gasped, opening her eyes to glance around in case anyone was nearby. The last thing she needed was to be busted half-naked in a compromising position in Darcy’s kitchen. For that matter, it was probably the last thing Darcy needed as well.

  She wondered if Darcy had a past as a concert pianist; his fingers moved so masterfully on her as her breathing became faster until she broke, throwing her head back as she moaned his name.

  Just in time for them to hear the click-click-click of heels descending the marble staircase in the front hall.

  “Oh my God, my mum,” Darcy said as he quickly stood up, pulling Caroline’s shirt down and helping her to get her pants back together, just moments before Lady Charlotte appeared in the doorway of the kitchen.

  “Why, hello, dear,” his mother said, nodding toward Caroline. Her elegant silver bob perfectly offset her charcoal summer shift, and her near-pewter eyes still looked puffy from crying. “I’m so happy to see you came in time.”

  Oh, she’d come in time, all righty. Just in time to get a right start to her day. Part of a complete breakfast, even put your average bowl of Frosted Flakes to shame. Thank goodness Lady Charlotte wasn’t privy to that little secret.

  Caroline wiped her mouth, hoping she didn’t have razor burn from Darcy’s extended five-o’clock shadow. Make that his o’dark thirty shadow.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” She smiled.

  “So you two have everything in mind that you’ll do today?” Lady Charlotte asked.

  If it was up to Caroline, absolutely. Rinse, lather, repeat.

  “We were just getting to that,” Darcy said, burying his hands deep in his pockets.

  “Yes, we were just putting our heads together,” Caroline said with a wink.

  Darcy gave her a dirty look.

  “Right, then,” Lady Charlotte said. “I’ll be out most of the day, so I’m sure you’ll be fine fending for yourselves.”

  “We will fend away, Mum,” Darcy said, trying to steer Caroline away from his mother and out the door as soon as possible, all the while blocking the telltale bulge withering away in his pants.

  “Come again soon!” his mother yelled after them.

  “Oh, I hope to,” Caroline said with a grin.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “WELL, this is a helluva mess,” Darcy said, running his fingers through his blond hair as he sat on a bench next to the door to one of the horse stalls.

  “What do you mean, mess?” Caroline said. They’d just cut across a glorious wildflower-speckled meadow on the property to get to the barn. She was nowhere near a mess in her mind. In fact, she was feeling just fine.

  “I mean, I’m sorry Caro, but this doesn’t change anything. Just because I lost self-control for a moment—”

  Caroline was ready to throw a horseshoe at him. “Lost control? Is that what you call that? I thought that was an expression of your true feelings. And if you’d be honest with yourself rather than mucking through the guilt swamp you’re in, you’d recognize that too.”

  “Guilt swamp?”

  “Yes. You heard me. Guilt swamp. Like there’s a damned alligator lurking beneath the mud, ready to take a chomp.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh, okay. So that man back there at that house who was kissing me. Wait, who instigated kissing me. Well, sort of. After maybe I planted the idea, but still. That man whose hands were all over me—and in a good way, I might add—you’re going to tell me that man had zero interest in what just happened and he isn’t a hundred percent lusting after me, just like I’m a hundred percent lusting after him.” She gave him a glare. “Even though right about now I could smack you one, if you’d like to know the truth of it.”

  “Of course I’m lusting after you,” Darcy said. “Like mad. What I’d love to do is throw you down right here and finish what I started. But that doesn’t make it right, and even if I’m weak sometimes, I try to recognize the errors of my ways so I can rectify them before it goes too far.”

  “Oh, that is just lovely,” she said, her voice rising with ire. “You sound like a priest after having a shameful fling with a nun. Here, have a hair shirt and a flagellation chain while you’re at it. So now I’m just this dumb, horny mistake of yours? Something from which you can catch yourself before you’ve done something really stupid like telling the truth about us?

  “And to think just ten minutes ago I was in my little happy place—with a little help from your skillful fingers. And now, well, let’s just say Caroline’s not happy. And if Caroline ain’t happy—well, you’d better look out is all I have to say.”

  “I’m afraid I need to ask you to keep your voice down,” he said. “It upsets the horses.”

  Carolyn had barely noticed the presence of horses she was so busy being fed
a line of horse manure. But when she looked up and saw several equine faces staring at her, she couldn’t help but calm down.

  She got up and approached one of them, a chestnut with a white star on his forehead, extending her hand for him to catch her scent. “Hey there, fella,” she said, letting the horse nuzzle her hand with his soft, velvety nose. “You’re gorgeous. What’s your name, handsome?”

  Darcy said, “Buttercup. Although you might well have insulted our little Buttercup, because he’s a she.”

  Caroline blushed and took a peek at the horse’s “undercarriage” just to be sure. “Oops! My bad. Sorry, baby. That’s okay... we girls need to stick together against the dumb boys, don’t we?” Buttercup blew air through her nose hard and whinnied while Caroline continued to coo at her. “Solidarity, that’s what it’s all about. Right, sweet girl?”

  Darcy just rolled his eyes, and Caroline knew she’d never understand where he was coming from.

  “We’d best be getting going here,” he said.

  “Doing what?”

  “We’re going to start filing away my father’s entire office. Everything will go in a keep, toss, or maybe pile. If you have any questions, you can ask me, or Alastair, whom you’ll meet at some point. We’ll break for lunch and then get right back to it. I hope to make great headway in there this afternoon. Are you up to the task?”

  Caroline grimaced. She’d have been way more up to the task had Darcy not pulled yet another about-face. But she had committed to helping out. And while it seemed Darcy hadn’t gotten his stress-reliever, she’d sure gotten hers, so at least she had a couple of hours in her. And maybe she could work on wearing him down while she was at it. After all, a girl could hope, couldn’t she?

  ~*~

  “What do I do with this huge pile of photographs I found in your father’s desk drawer?” Caroline pointed to a fat stack of images on top of the desk.

  Darcy came over to quickly sift through them. “Huh. I don’t recall ever seeing a number of these.”