“Darcy,” Adrian said, looking straight at him. “You father wasn’t suffering, taking care of his estate. It’s what he enjoyed doing. He could have hired someone to do every last bit of it, and he could have up and traveled the world. Or sat in a comfortable chair, reading books. He chose to do this because it was what he loved to do.”
“But I feel guilty.”
“Because you didn’t live your father’s life for him? Sorry, my friend, but that is absolutely preposterous. Who does that? Besides, when you were working for me, was it all fun and games?”
A half smile broke on Darcy’s face. “Well, in a way, yes.”
“Okay, so we had a lot of fun. But it’s been serious too,” Adrian said. “My God, I couldn’t have done whatever it is I’ve done without you by my side. So please know that I am deeply grateful to you for your help, service, and most of all friendship over the years. You have been a vital cog in the wheel that is the royal family of Monaforte. And don’t think I didn’t realize the whole time that you didn’t need to do this. That you could go off and be the Marquess of Weltenham—Lord Darcy, if you will. Although I know you’d have been bored out of your skull.”
Darcy rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it. I hate bloody damned numbers. And all I’ve done for days is pore through receipts and bills and charts and statistics, and I want to pull my eyes right out of their sockets.”
“Please don’t. Would be a bloody mess. So now that we’ve solved that, what say we do a double date, just me, Emma, you, and Caroline?” Adrian raised his eyebrows and made his eyes wide, as if that was going to sell his plan more easily.
But Darcy shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh. Oh, no. Absolutely no can do.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Edouardo.”
“Your brother? What on earth could your brother have to do with your not seeing Caroline?”
Darcy buried his head in a cushion. He could almost still smell Caroline’s perfume in it if he focused hard enough.
Adrian got up out of his chair and went over to the sofa, plopping down next to Darcy. “Am I going to have to tickle it out of you like we did when we were kids?”
“That would be weird.”
“I’m willing to risk it,” Adrian said. “I’m not willing to take no for an answer. You have turned completely strange on us, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. And I am going to do so before I have to show up at a meeting with my mother in an hour. So spit it out.”
“The death of my father,” Darcy began. “It brought out something dark in Edouardo. I think it’s the whole primogeniture thing. I get the feeling he’s deeply bitter that the estate, the title, the whole thing goes to me. Like he feels that just because I was born first I don’t deserve it any more than he does.”
Adrian nodded.
“And to a degree, well, he’s right,” Darcy said. “It’s antiquated, and I can see how frustrating it is to him. But will I be generous with him and Clementine? Of course I will. I will share equally in everything that is passed down. But I resent being treated like I’m the bad guy in this scenario. I just happened to be the firstborn, and in this country, to the firstborn go the assets.”
“Well, that sucks,” Adrian said. “And I completely understand. I’m sure my brothers aren’t thrilled with the deal. Although in my case it comes with a lot more demands, which I’d imagine they’re happy to not bother with. Certainly Zander. I don’t know about Christopher or Peter. So I hear ya. But what I don’t get is what this has to do with Caroline.”
Darcy pounded his fist into the arm of the chair. “God, I don’t even want to talk about it.”
Adrian remained silent for a few minutes, then he held up his finger. “I’ve got it. How about this? We mime it out. Like a game of charades. So you don’t have to speak.”
Darcy cracked a smile. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”
“I aim to please. Now spill.”
“All right, fine. But this is between you and me. I don’t want you breathing a word of this to anyone.”
Adrian nodded. “Did I tell anyone when you got busted smoking weed by the headmaster’s wife back in boarding school?”
“Wait a minute.” Darcy put his hands on his hips, indignant. “You got busted too!”
“Yeah, so I didn’t tell anyone about either of us.”
“Now there’s a vote of confidence that reassures me.”
“Oh go on. I’m your best friend. Since when have you not told me things?”
“Since it might hurt someone else’s reputation.”
“Aha... The plot thickens. There’s a reputation at stake. Come on, Darce. You’ve got me on the edge of my seat.” He sat up and shifted forward, just to be literal.
“So Caroline and I were having a perfectly fine time of it. We kind of got off on the wrong foot. Well, it was a very good foot, actually. But it was a bad idea.”
“So you two went at it but then you regretted it.” Adrian nodded in understanding.
“Like rabbits.”
“But then?”
“You’re going to think this is so uncool you might not talk to me ever again.”
“Please don’t tell me you changed your mind because you felt guilty.”
“I changed my mind because I felt guilty.”
Adrian took his fist and pretended to pound it against Darcy’s head. “Are you daft, man?”
“Sorry. I have a conscience!”
“Conscience? That is downright ludicrous. You’re there with a woman you’ve got the hots for, she’s gorgeous and right there and willing to seal the deal, for God’s sake, and you close down the shop instead?”
“Well, when you put it that way...”
“So then what? Because I know she said she was perfectly happy until she came home hysterical. Was there more?”
Darcy heaved a sigh, even bigger than the last several he’d been heaving throughout this conversation, the kind of sigh you heave when you have to own up to being a really huge loser in the eyes of your best friend. “So then we’re in here working. And I’m trying to avoid any close contact with her because I know I’m going to cave in if given the chance. And then she forces some sneaky close contact on me when I least expect it, and sure enough, I caved.”
“Okay, so we’re back to going at it like rabbits?”
“To say the least. Rabbits but with more urgency.”
“And the problem was?”
“Yeah. So. Clearly Caroline and I have chemistry. So much so that I can’t seem to control myself around her. And while I wasn’t controlling myself around her—”
“Something gets in the way. But what would it be?” he said as a horse whinnied down below. “Can’t be one of those four-legged creatures.” He put his finger to his lips, pondering.
“Try the two-legged variety.”
“Ooooh. So someone walked in on you?”
“Not just someone,” Darcy said. “My idiot brother. On the warpath. Starts yelling about Caroline being a gold digger.”
“Ouch. That was entirely uncalled for. What the hell is up with him?”
Darcy shook his head. “I told you, he’s got this chip on his shoulder, and he’s now dumping on Caroline. Who didn’t take it well, by the way.”
“And he did this while you were in the middle of—” Adrian motioned with his fist in a forward thrust.
“Oh yeah.” Darcy grimaced. “Cock-in-it interruptus, the bastard.”
“Ouch,” Adrian said again. “And here you were needing that stress relief so badly. Damn. That brother of yours needs to have a talking-to.”
“Don’t you dare,” Darcy said. “I’m not speaking to him at all, but if I decide to, trust me, my words will be well chosen and incisive. I’m so furious with him I can’t even begin to utter a thing to him.”
“In the meantime, you need to apologize to poor Caroline.”
“Pretty sure that isn’t going to help matters much. She was out of here so fast I w
ondered if she has some cheetah blood in her.”
“And you didn’t go after her?”
“What was I going to do? I had my pants down around my ankles; she was zipped and gone before I could find the button on my jeans.”
“How’d she get back to town?”
“Hell if I know. All I know is I looked and she was gone.”
The both heard a voice from down below. “Darcy darling?”
“Mum?”
She popped her head around the corner of the door. “Oh, hello, Adrian. You’re looking well. Love does that to you.”
Adrian smiled. Darcy resisted sticking a finger down his throat. Love, romance. It was all a giant distraction and a pain in his stressed-out, overworked butt.
“I’ve got good news for you, sweetheart,” his mother said as she planted a kiss on his cheek.
“What’s that, Mum? I could use some good news.”
“Perfect,” she said, her arms outstretched, hands on his shoulders. “You look so exhausted and weary. I have just the antidote for you.”
“And that is?” The next flight out to Ibiza would be too much to ask.
“I’ve arranged for a lovely dinner for two tomorrow night, just you and Caroline. I got a quiet table at Trattoria Uccelli. The two of you, some fabulous Italian food, an intimate setting. It’ll be just what the doctor ordered.”
Lady Charlotte beamed at her son, who looked as if he was about to have teeth extracted, minus the painkiller.
Chapter Twenty
HALF the romance of a romantic restaurant comes from being in a romantic relationship. Which could have been the case for this dinner, had not one disastrous event after another occurred to derail the romance with this relationship.
Which was what Caroline was thinking as she was en route to the Most Awkward Dinner Ever, courtesy of a relentless matchmaker mother-slash-marchioness who seemed used to getting her way.
As the driver pulled up to the now-familiar manor home of one Darcy, Lord Weltenham, Caroline’s stomach did a triple salchow followed by a double axel until she thought she would throw up right then and there. And when Darcy’s very mother opened the door and practically shoved her son into the back seat with Caroline, well, she thought she’d never forget the look of horror on his face as long as she lived. It was as if Lady Charlotte was forcing her son to attend the sixth grade dance with his babysitter.
Caroline’s plan to cope with this night involved copious amounts of wine.
A stultifying silence blanketed the back seat of the town car as it meandered down charming country roads, destination unknown. Caroline had assumed people around here mostly stayed in town for dinners out. Lord knows she’d seen plenty of restaurants. But clearly there were some out-of-town secrets. Either that or she was being kidnapped and he was going to throw her on the next plane home so that she’d be out of his hair for good.
“Lovely evening,” Darcy finally said, clearing his throat.
“Yes, quite,” Caroline replied.
“Look, Caroline—”
Caro took a deep breath and focused on that glass of red wine that would cut the tension just enough to get through this evening without hurling a steak knife at this frustrating-as-hell man next to her.
“Well, your mother certainly wants to force us together against all odds,” she said. Wine, wine, wine. Wine is fine.
Darcy smiled. He’d never seen his mother so vociferous about a woman for him before. Maybe because until then she’d been busy tending to the love of her life. And now she had a void that needed to be filled somehow.
“I apologize for my mother. She doesn’t mean to be so pushy,” he said. “She’s really a kind and thoughtful person.”
“I think your mother is wonderful. I’ve had nothing but lovely conversations with her. And I know she loves her son very much, so what could be better than a mother who wants her children to be happy?”
“Yes. About that. I suppose my mother’s a bit rudderless right now. She’s trying to act as if things are normal and trying to be there for her children and to take care of our emotions. And so I think it does her heart good to try to pair me up with you. She’s probably under the impression that she’s doing us a big favor.”
Caroline pursed her lips, choosing not to comment on that, instead, letting silence pervade the car. She figured if their driver was watching their body language from his rearview mirror, he’d likely turn around and drop her right back at the palace and not bother with the dinner.
“Maybe I’m not saying this right.” Darcy leaned forward, burying his face in his hands. Finally he sat up again. “Jesus, I’m afraid I have lost all ability to be myself. Here I have you right here next to me, which is what I want, and yet inside my head are warning bells clanging as if I’m in a nuclear power plant that’s overheated.”
“Gee, how flattering. That’s the first time I’ve been compared to nuclear holocaust.”
“In a good way,” he said, a sly grin crossing his face, his inviting brown eyes crinkling up.
“Only the best, naturally.”
“How about we call a truce and enjoy this dinner together? Seems a waste of a lovely evening with a beautiful woman to do otherwise.”
“No more talk of Caroline-as-mushroom-cloud, then?” she said, cracking the tiniest of smiles and glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.
“As long as you promise to stop looking at me like you’d like to see me dead.”
Caroline blurted out a laugh. “Mind reading, are you?”
“More like I feel as if I know you enough to guess what you’re thinking,” he said. “And maybe, just maybe, if I were you, I’d be thinking the same thing.”
“I will neither confirm nor deny it, Your Lordship,” she said, half mocking. It was still weird, thinking of Darcy as a lord. He was just silly Darcy who had ridden his bike into a mailbox and split open his forehead. Hardly a lord of any manor. Except that he was now, which as she plainly knew was a deal breaker when it came to them.
~*~
The restaurant sat at the end of a high country road, flanked by cow-speckled pastures on three sides, with a breathtaking view of the Mediterranean. Grapevines and fairy lights tangled around the trellises that bordered the front patio, and the music of ocean waves harmonized with the occasional clanging of cowbells to set a serene scene. Darcy nodded his head as he passed by a few of the patrons dining alfresco. Then he placed a proprietary hand at the base of her spine as he steered her to a secluded table tucked toward the back, one that still afforded an ocean view while providing some privacy from the other diners.
“This place is absolutely magical,” Caroline said, wishing the magic would be complete by things being better with Darcy.
“Yes, well, suffice it to say my mother knows what she’s doing.”
“She’s sweet. She means well.”
“It’s the only reason we keep her around,” he said, cracking that half smile that betrayed his dimples.
“I’m sure people have been kicked out for less.” Caroline opened her menu while Darcy ordered a bottle of wine.
“Aren’t we in a truce right now? No acerbic remarks, no digs, no reminders of all the complications, okay?”
Caroline sighed and nodded. “Right. I forgot. What’s good here?” She focused her gaze on the simple menu before her.
“Everything. The porchetta on homemade fire-roasted bread with broccoli rabe, aged provolone, and garlic aioli will wake you in the middle of the night with fond memories of each bite. You want to share it for an antipasto?”
Shy of having other things wake her in pleasure in the middle of the night, she was going to have to settle for food being her sole hedonism source.
“These Italian meals with antipasto and primi and secondi and all those other things. I never know when I need to stop ordering!”
“If you’d like, I’d be happy to order for you. I can promise you we’ll fight each other for the last bite of that porchetta. Then for a pri
mi, I’d recommend the pappardelle with duck ragù. Or the homemade ravioli in rosé sauce. You can’t go wrong.” He kissed his fingers. “But that ragù, it’s quite memorable.”
A waiter arrived with a bottle of prosecco, which he deftly poured into flutes he placed before them.
Darcy held his up to Caroline’s. “Cin cin,” he said, tapping glasses before taking a sip.
“Chin chin?”
“An Italian toast. It means cheers.”
“Oh, in that case, cin cin,” she said, tapping his glass.
“For secondi, let’s share the osso bucco. That way we can leave room for dessert.”
“You’re the boss,” she said, sipping her prosecco, trying to just let the night unfold and not get her head all wrapped up in whatever was or wasn’t going on.
The waiter soon came with a bottle of Brunello di Montalcino, and Caroline knew she’d better retract that vow of much wine or she’d be under the table before they even got to the secondi.
“So how’s that office project going?”
Darcy shrugged. “My father wasn’t one to throw out much. Especially hard since it’s impossible to distinguish between what should be archived for the history books and what needs to meet its demise in the shredder.”
Caroline laughed. “Yeah, the lord of your manor didn’t have the luxury of shredding a few hundred years ago.”
“Right. It’s a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I’m finding documents of feed orders from fifty years ago, which are interesting, just to see the prices paid back then. But of what use is that? Is that something to stockpile?” He stared at the base of his wineglass, spinning the stem slowly.
“Hard making those decisions, I guess,” she said. “Shame you don’t have help with it.”
He glanced up into her eyes. Of course he’d had help, until... “I’m really sorry about my brother, Caro.”
She waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone’s tense. It’s been hard.”
“That doesn’t excuse his behavior. He’s got a lot of issues is all I can say. He’s angry that our father left us so abruptly. But he’s also feeling as if he doesn’t matter since he’s not me.”
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