Hired: The Cinderella Chef

by Myrna Mackenzie

  Olivia walked over and took the bowl out of her hands. “Now you don’t.”

  “Hey!”

  “I know how to make a cake,” Olivia said. “You, pick up the phone.”

  “And say what?”

  “That you love him.”

  “No.”

  “That you miss him, then.”

  Darcy thought about that. “No, he would worry.”

  “Then at least ask him who those people are that have been hanging around you lately.”

  “I know who they are. They’re bodyguards. He’s trying to protect me and the others at Able House from the Cal Barrows of the world.”

  “Well, then, you could at least thank the man. I’ll bet you haven’t even done that yet. Some appreciative woman you are.”

  Darcy opened her mouth. “I can’t, Liv.”

  “He would call you if the tables were turned. Mr. Judson always treated everyone the same. He was always fair and polite and courteous to the lowliest of his employees.”

  “That’s so not fair of you to remind me of that.”

  “Yeah, but it’s true. Go in the other room. I won’t listen.”

  It wouldn’t matter. Darcy intended to make this very polite and extremely short.

  But in the end, her plans went awry. The person who answered the phone was a woman who said that Patrick was unavailable. She was going to give him a massage, as soon as he woke up.

  Patrick lay facedown on a table in the room adjoining the team locker room. He was exhausted. He’d fallen asleep waiting for Tanya, the team masseuse to finish with another competitor, and his unintentional nap had forced Tanya to wait for him to wake up. Now, Tanya was going to try to beat life back into his body, but his heart wasn’t in the process. Because his body wasn’t really the reason he felt so rotten.

  “Your cell phone rang while you were out. I carried it into the other room and answered it so you wouldn’t wake up. You need rest,” she said, handing him the phone.

  He needed a lot more than that, but Patrick was trying not to think about why he felt so miserable, especially since there was no solution to the problem.

  Now, as Tanya began to pummel his muscles, he looked at the record of received calls on his cell phone. The one that Tanya had told him about had come straight from his house.

  His heart leaped just before reality set in. Probably Lane. Like Cara and Amy, Lane had called him several times already. He missed them, too, but he especially missed—

  “Dammit,” he said.

  Tanya slapped him on the shoulder with her meaty hand. “Do not swear in my presence. I cannot unkink your muscles if you don’t lie still and cooperate.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll keep the kinked muscles. Right now, I have to call my sister. Thank you for the massage.”

  “I barely began.”

  “I know. Bill me for the full session.”

  “You’re going to be sorry, Mr. Judson. Your body has taken a beating these past two weeks. You look, if you don’t mind my saying so, like heck.”

  “Like hell. I look like hell.”

  “Exactly.” Tanya left.

  Once she had gone, Patrick sat up and hung his head. He ran his fingers through his hair at the temple. He felt worse than he looked. No question why. He was in love with Darcy, who had made love with him, but had told him to marry someone else. Because she wasn’t available.

  “So, do it,” he told himself.

  Maybe he would. Maybe tomorrow. Right now he had to return Lane’s call. He hoped that Darcy wasn’t around. If she was, he just might do something stupid…like saying how he really felt about her, and that would make her feel guilty and unhappy. “No, I’m not doing that,” he said to the empty room.

  Darcy was wrestling with the centerpiece she was creating and trying not to envision what Patrick might be doing when Lane and Cara and Amy came into the room. Amy put Davey down and he gave everyone a big smile, then ran over to where Charlie was pulling things out of his toy bag.

  “Charlie,” Davey said. “Me, too.”

  Charlie gave his cousin a sigh and handed Davey a truck.

  Instantly, Darcy went on full alert. For several reasons. The three sisters had never shown up in her kitchen all at the same time, they’d never looked at her in that strange way they were looking at her now, and…this was the first time Darcy had seen Charlie since the day she had run over his foot. What if he was afraid of her now? The thought of scaring a child…

  “That looks great, Darcy,” Amy said, indicating the arrangement of red and white candles, crystal glasses of cinnamon red candies and white mints and the cardinal and white University of Wisconsin-Madison logo. A small photo of Lane wearing her new red and white jacket was front and center.

  “Love it,” Lane agreed. “But I was wondering…”

  “We were all wondering,” Cara said, plopping down in a chair. “Have you heard from our brother lately?”

  Darcy’s panic antennae switched to full power. She felt as if she’d been hit by a sister sledgehammer. Not wanting them to see her face, she turned away and started rolling toward the other side of the room, trying to pretend she was intent on a task. “Not at all. Why do you ask?”

  A small giggle sounded to her left and she saw that Davey was trying to play peekaboo with her from behind a chair whose rungs in no way hid his face. Against her will, she smiled, but the tension still gripped her as she heard Amy’s next comment.

  “He just called Lane, and…I spoke to him two days ago via video phone. He doesn’t look well at all.”

  Darcy’s heart stopped. Trying to hold on to her composure, hide her concern and not disappoint a child all at the same time, she cupped her palms over her face, then separated her fingers and peered out at Davey. “What do you mean, he doesn’t look well?” she asked just as Davey giggled again.

  “He looks positively ill.” Lane’s voice was choked, and Darcy turned slowly to face her.

  When Davey came over and approached her, Darcy didn’t even stop to think. She reached out and plucked up two plastic ladles and two plastic bowls and handed them to him.

  “Two bows,” he said.

  “Two bows, indeed,” she agreed, but her hands clenched. And not because she was speaking to a child.

  “Patrick’s sick?” Her voice came out too thin, slightly high-pitched.

  “We don’t know,” Cara said. “That’s the problem. He isn’t saying. He isn’t saying anything of substance.”

  Darcy fought not to let her feelings show. Panic. Fear. Love. More fear. She needed to see Patrick, to talk to him, but…

  “I’ve tried to pry info from him,” Amy said, “but he insists that everything is perfect. We’re not sure if he’s keeping things from us because he’s still playing the guardian-brother who wants to protect his younger sisters from bad news or—we’re beginning to think that maybe we’re just too close to him to be objective. This is the first time Patrick has gone away for any length of time, and maybe we’re just letting the fact that we miss him get in the way. We could be reading him wrong or just somehow selfishly hoping everything isn’t perfect so that he’ll come home sooner. We need someone more rational and sane than us to offer some perspective.”

  Oh man, were they really talking about her?

  “You seem to have gotten to know him pretty well in the weeks before he left. We just…I’m going to call him,” Lane explained. “You talk to him and tell us what you think.”

  “No!” Darcy said, but as she said it she glanced to the side to see that Charlie had sidled up to her. He was holding out his hands and looking at her with big solemn eyes that quickly filled with tears. His lip was trembling in that way that little children’s lips trembled, the way that made your heart break.

  “Oh, Charlie, I wasn’t yelling at you, sweetheart,” she said. “Did you want some dishes, too?”

  He nodded and she wasn’t sure which one of them was going to cry first. “Here,” she said, rolling back a bit and di
gging into a drawer. “Here’s a whole set of measuring cups and spoons. Okay?”

  Charlie nodded and ducked his head. He took his toys and retreated to a corner while Darcy’s throat closed up. For so many reasons.

  She looked up to see the sisters staring at her. “Will you do it?” Lane asked. “I’ll get a video line going.”

  Would she do it? Yes. Her heart filled with tears and fear. Patrick was ill. She loved him and she was going to kill him if he wasn’t taking care of himself.

  “Yes, please call Patrick,” she said, and she prayed that his sisters didn’t know just how much this meant to her.

  Patrick’s nerves were strung tight. This was the second time in an hour he’d spoken to his sisters. Something was up. Lane had put the call through, but now she was being evasive, claiming that the other girls wanted to speak with him, but he had spoken to Cara and Amy only yesterday.

  “Hey, big brother, how’s it going?” Cara asked.

  “Yeah, how’s it going, Patrick? What did you do today?” Amy asked.

  “I’m fine. I was paramotoring.” But then she already knew that. He’d told her that yesterday. And…Lane had set up in the kitchen. It was the first time she’d placed a call there.

  His head began to pound. The camera didn’t take in all of the room. He studied the perimeters of the viewing area and frowned. Where was Darcy? He tried not to think about the fact that she might be with Jared…or someone else. Maybe she was dancing. Or maybe Eleanor had sent her off on a catering job or maybe she was wheeling down the sidewalk from his home to hers. She’d have to pass Cal’s.

  Patrick scowled.

  “What?” Lane asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. That’s good. I—Darcy’s here.”

  Now his heart began to thunder. He cursed the limits of the video linkup. Where was she?

  She came into view, moving closer to the camera. “Patrick.” That was it, just that soft sound, like a caress. “Your sisters were right. You’re not taking care of yourself.”

  “I am.” A total lie.

  Now that cute, stern look he loved came over her face. “I’m not your sisters. I’m not going to treat you with kid gloves or lie to you. You look like you’ve been staying up all night and day and not eating right.”

  He held his hand up. “I’m fine, just brilliant. But you…are you getting out of the kitchen?”

  She smiled and his whole body ached. “I’m a cook. I’m supposed to be in the kitchen.”

  “But not all the time. And those neighbors…have they given you any more trouble?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Dammit, Darcy. You look as if you’ve lost weight.”

  She blinked and looked slightly evasive. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to ask about a girl’s weight? That’s not like you, Patrick. You’ve usually got that etiquette thing down pat.”

  Ah, she was teasing him. He loved it when she teased him, but not when he couldn’t be there with her or touch her. This damn video connection wasn’t nearly three dimensional enough. You’d think that a man with his money could convince someone to invent a device that captured the essence of Darcy.

  “You’re right. No weight questions. Are you…enjoying life, then?”

  She nodded. That was it? Just a nod? No details?

  “And…” He frowned. “Everything is all right at Able House, isn’t it? I get reports but they don’t really tell me the half of it.”

  “We’re okay,” she said quietly. “You shouldn’t worry.”

  All right, there was a loaded sentence. “I could have postponed this trip, done more before I left,” he said, hating the feeling that he wasn’t there to control things.

  “Patrick, look at me,” Darcy said. So quietly. Her voice was almost a whisper, but it mesmerized him.

  He looked at her, he connected with her. “Don’t worry,” she said.

  “You know I’m going to.”

  She frowned. “Are you…what are you doing?”

  He rattled off a list of activities he’d taken part in during the past two weeks in various stops in Italy, Spain and France. Skydiving, bungee jumping, white water rafting in Chamonix. But he didn’t want to talk about himself. “Have you and Jared gone dancing anymore?” Did that sound jealous? “And Cerise,” he added, just in case he had sounded jealous.

  “Once.” Her answer told him nothing. “Are there…are there a lot of parties?”

  “I suppose there are quite a few. The company arranges events during the day and entertainment for the evening.”

  As he spoke, he saw Charlie appear at Darcy’s side. Where were his sisters? Why weren’t they taking care of Charlie? Didn’t they know how difficult this was for Darcy? No, of course they didn’t. He had never told them about her past, and Darcy wouldn’t have told them, either.

  “Is Cara there?” he asked suddenly.

  Darcy blinked and slid back. Cara moved into her spot, but he didn’t want to discuss this in front of everyone, not even his other sisters. Charlie was Cara’s and it should only be her. “I have something to ask you, but…take the call in the other room, all right?”

  Cara’s expression turned to alarm, but she clicked off the monitor. When her voice resumed, they were audio only. “Patrick, what is it? What’s this about?”

  “Darcy. It’s all about Darcy.” In as brief a manner as he could, he explained that she needed to be careful with Charlie and Darcy.

  “Charlie is the best,” he told her. “I love him to pieces, but Darcy is fragile. Especially after that dinner, she’ll be…don’t make her take care of him.”

  “I didn’t know, Patrick. I didn’t ask her to take care of him and now that I know, I wouldn’t. I—”

  “I’m not blaming you, Cara, but I just…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t think I did well by Darcy. I want her to be happy, and it’s driving me nuts that I don’t have the power to make sure that she is.”

  Cara hesitated. “Is that why you look so beat-up? You’re worrying, the way you used to worry about us when we were growing up.”

  No, it wasn’t like that at all.

  “Something like that,” he said.

  “We’ll look out for her,” she told him. Cara was, he knew, a woman of her word. Her promise should make him feel better, so why didn’t it?

  Because he wanted to be the one. Even as the thought formed, Patrick realized that there was more than one meaning for that statement. He wanted to be the one.

  But that wasn’t a choice that was open to him.

  “I’ll want a full report next week, sweetheart. On all of you.”

  And if things weren’t all that they should be, he was going to do something drastic.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DARCY looked up when Cara came into the room and found the other woman studying her intently.

  “What?” Darcy asked.

  Cara shook her head. “So, what’s the verdict on Patrick?”

  “He looks…tired.”

  “Worse than tired,” Lane said.

  “He doesn’t look like Patrick. It’s as if something’s missing from him,” Amy said.

  “It’s as if someone turned off the light inside him. His essence, the thing that makes him Patrick has been dimmed.” The second that Darcy uttered the words, the girls turned toward her.

  “Yes,” they all agreed.

  “He’s worried about you,” Darcy offered.

  But the sisters exchanged a look. “He asked an awful lot of questions about you,” Amy said.

  “He knows that I have Lewis and Amy has Richard and Lane has school, but it’s Darcy he’s worried about,” Cara agreed.

  Darcy’s heart hurt. “That’s so unfair.”

  The sisters looked startled and Darcy shook her head. “I don’t mean that what you’re saying was unfair to me. I meant that it’s unfair that Patrick should be worrying. He’s done all he could for me. He’s even hired bodyguar
ds to watch over us at Able House.”

  “Yes, but that wouldn’t be enough for him. Patrick’s very hands-on. Not being able to prevent our parents’ deaths ate at him. I think that colored his life, so when one of us got hurt and he couldn’t keep it from happening or cure us, he walked the floor and pestered the doctors even though he knew they were doing their best. He did the job of two parents, so no, hiring a bodyguard wouldn’t dispel Patrick’s concerns.”

  Cara shook her head. “It’s you. You’re the one.”

  Darcy bit her lip. Her throat felt tight. “He’s supposed to be playing, not worrying about me. I told him I wanted him to find a wife. That and all those fun things he wants to do should be all he’s thinking about.”

  Lane raised one brow in a gesture that was so like Patrick’s that Darcy had to swallow hard to keep from remembering. “A wife? I wish, but despite all our attempts…apparently not likely yet. I’ve heard from friends over there that there are plenty of women falling over him, but when he attends functions, he goes alone and leaves alone.”

  Darcy tried not to react to that. Relief and distress warred within her.

  “Look. Darcy,” Cara said. “Patrick is obviously worried sick about you. How can he enjoy himself when he’s so concerned?”

  “I don’t think he’s sleeping right, either,” Darcy said. “He really will get sick if he doesn’t take better care of himself. I’ll call him back and reassure him. I’ll tell him I’m just great.”

  “You already did. We did, too. Numerous times. He’s asked about you every time any of us has spoken to him. I don’t know exactly what’s going on between my brother and you, and maybe it’s none of my business. Or it wouldn’t ordinarily be my business, but if neurosing about your well-being is affecting his health and well-being—well, whatever your relationship is, it’s…”

  “It’s my fault,” Darcy said. “From the beginning he knew I had issues.” She launched into a brief explanation of her past. When she got to the part about children, Cara nodded sadly.

  “That’s why he was so worried just now that I was letting Charlie crawl all over you.”

  Darcy bit her lip, thinking about how she had scared Charlie, but also about how he had been so quick to forgive her. What a charmer he was and…he was Patrick’s nephew. Her heart swelled, thinking of the two little boys and their uncle. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Patrick knows where I’m vulnerable. I wish…I should have done more to show him that I can be strong. I hate the fact that I haven’t made more of an effort to show him how much of a difference he made in my world. He brought me out of myself.”