Love Everlasting

by Tracey Alvarez

  Reid’s molars ground together so hard it was little wonder they didn’t crack with the effort of him keeping his big mouth shut. Ridiculous to feel any sort of possessiveness over who Darby chose to eat with—even though he could guarantee Hugh had other things on his mind apart from dinner.

  Kaitlyn cocked her head, and the finger that’d been poking his arm turned into a clamp. “You follow them and keep an eye on her.”

  “I can’t do that—you go with her.”

  She huffed out an annoyed sigh. “Do you know how much leverage eight-year-olds get if their mother is late home twice in a week?” She shook her head. “You’ll have to do it.”

  He grimaced, straightening to his full height. “I’m a helluva lot more obvious than you. How am I supposed to blend in at a crowded restaurant?”

  Not as tall as Darby, Kaitlyn had to crane her neck up to meet his gaze. “I meant park outside Essential Thai and then make sure she gets home okay. I didn’t mean gate-crash the party and go all caveman on her.” She shot him a sly smile. “Unless that’s your ulterior motive, Bean.”

  Throw Darby over his shoulder and drag her back to his cave to have his wicked way with her. His stomach dropped, filled with the weight of a thousand butterflies.

  “Only Mac gets to call me that, Katie-pie.” Dredging up her ex-husband’s pet name for her was a low blow, but desperate times called for distracting measures.

  Her gaze slitted while nuclear missiles loaded behind her eyes. Reid took advantage of that countdown to duck around her. “If I’m going to act as your spy, I’d better get those costumes loaded into my car.”

  “Fine,” she said. “But are you really spying for me?”

  A loaded question, which he brushed off with a wave before he strode for the door.

  Ninety minutes later, he was still parked across the street and a little bit down from the Thai restaurant. He’d found the perfect spying location with an almost unobstructed view of the front doors and plate glass windows, but if he’d been luckier, Hugh and Darby would’ve found a window seat. He couldn’t see where they were from this angle, but he knew they were still in there. Soon after he’d arrived, he’d spotted Hugh at the bar with two shot glasses in his hands, and then shortly after that, Darby taking his place and handing the still-full shot glass back to the bartender, who exchanged it for a wine. Reid had grinned at his reflection in the rearview mirror. Darby was making her own decisions. Good for her.

  By the time Darby and Hugh stepped outside, the rain was coming down in earnest. Reid sank down in his seat, although his gray car among many shouldn’t catch her attention. He couldn’t do anything but watch as they huddled together under an umbrella, Darby practically having to cling to Hugh like ivy to stay out of the rain. Hugh then pointed toward a cherry-red Porsche—the King family owned a dealership in town—and Darby nodded. Lights flashed on the Porsche as the locks were deactivated and Hugh’s bobbing umbrella made a run for the driver’s door, leaving Darby in the rain. Through the drips on his windshield Reid watched as she hunched her shoulders and splashed through the puddles to the car—where Hugh was already snug and dry inside.

  Little prick, indeed. What other ungentlemanly behavior would Hugh try tonight?

  Reid started his car and when the Porsche pulled away from the curb, he followed, keeping a couple of cars in front of them since he knew where they were headed. At least, he hoped he knew where they were headed—to drop Darby off at home. Alone.

  With his fingers drumming an impatient tattoo and feeling more like a sleazy private eye than 007, Reid parked a few doors down from Darby’s house, in view of her lit-up front porch. Darby and Hugh were already standing on it by the time Reid killed his headlights, Darby with her back to him, keying open the door. From this angle he could see the taut lines of her jaw and the pale slash of her mouth.

  Reid allowed himself to relax, sinking into his seat with a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Date night was officially over, and the target was headed inside.

  “Nighty-night, asshat,” he said, unable to prevent a smug grin appearing on his face.

  The grin only lasted for the time it took for Hugh to grab Darby and spin her around into his arms.

  Chapter 11

  On the Darby scale of dating disasters, Hugh wasn’t the worst date she’d ever had. But that wasn’t saying much when you compared him to the guy who’d invited his male cousin to gate-crash their date with the expectation of a threesome. A cousin with whom the guy was already in a relationship.

  Um, no thanks.

  When Hugh grabbed her, reeling her in for a kiss that had too much tongue waaaay too fast, the shock of it was like falling off the Stewart Island ferry into Foveaux Strait. A cold, wet, and tasting-of-salt kiss—Hugh had been gobbling olives as if they were grapes.

  Darby hated olives. But she could’ve tolerated the briny thrust of his tongue—maybe—if he hadn’t shown her his true colors that evening. He’d bought her a tequila shot instead of the white wine she’d asked for, and every stilted subject they touched during dinner Hugh somehow managed to redirect back to himself. Chad and Dave from the theater arrived an hour into the meal and Hugh invited them to sit at their table. The trio of men then ignored her, discussing parties they’d been to and how much alcohol they’d consumed.

  As if they were teenagers instead of grown men.

  Hugh pressed her backward and she stumbled back a step. Her butt hit the front door and bumped it open. While trying to wrestle herself out of his grasp—oh my God, the man’s mouth is like a giant squid’s sucker—a brush of fur streaked past her ankle.

  Darby gave up any semblance of politeness and stomped on Hugh’s right loafer-enclosed toes. He made a sound like a startled chicken, but thankfully removed his mouth from hers. Darby tried but couldn’t resist the urge to wipe her lips on her coat sleeve—which even after the rain was still drier than her enthusiastically puppy-dog-slobbered mouth.

  Just ewwww.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said, ducking around him to the edge of her porch.

  There—a flash of a colorpoint Siamese streaking low to the ground and disappearing into the shrubbery. And—damn it—a large tabby cat legging it as fast as he could around the side of the house. She pushed past a grimacing, grumbling Hugh, who was holding onto the porch railing and rubbing his toe, to pull the door shut before Duke could escape.

  “Can you give me a hand?” She yanked her keys from the lock and switched on the tiny flashlight attached to the key chain.

  “A hand with what?” Hugh said. “Getting me some arnica for my bruised toes? Yes, please. Bloody hell, Darby, are those ugly sneakers lead lined?”

  She so didn’t have time for his precious ego. “My cats escaped outside and I need to get them in again.”

  Hugh’s upper lip curled. “I’m in agony here and you’re worried about cats?”

  The thin beam of Darby’s flashlight did little to brighten up the dark spots of her yard, and she’d completely lost sight of Spartacus.

  “Those cats mean a lot to her.”

  Darby jerked at the sound of Reid’s voice suddenly appearing from behind her, and she dropped her key chain. She whirled around, and there he was on the sidewalk by her house, looking big, hotter than hell, and seriously capable of doing more damage to Hugh than a bruised toe.

  “If you’re not up to the task of looking for them,” Reid continued, his eyes narrowing, “feel free to let the grown-ups deal with the problem.”

  Hugh lowered his foot and puffed out his chest. “I can deal with this, Hudson. Why don’t you just slither back under whatever pretty clump of sequins you crawled out of?”

  Reid smiled at him, and Darby’s gut twisted into knots. It wasn’t a nice smile.

  “Clump of sequins, that’s a good one.” Reid gave a small jerk of his head in the direction of Hugh’s car. “You’re wasting time. Leave.”

  “You can’t tell me to leave,” Hugh blustered.

  O
h, for Pete’s sake. “Well, I can,” Darby said. “Please leave.”

  “What the—”

  Darby snatched her key chain and pointed the flashlight up at Hugh’s face, flushed and blotchy with indignation.

  “—hell?” He squinted at the bright light, his forehead furrowing.

  As if he’d really expected her to take his side. Sheesh.

  With no time to ponder what she’d ever seen in the little weasel, Darby jogged down the stairs. She also had no time to ponder at the coincidence of Reid showing up—she was just heart-pumpingly glad to see him. It wasn’t until she’d taken a few steps away from him that she discovered her hands shook so hard the flashlight beam was wobbling all over the place.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Reid stepped forward, steadying her hand and slipping an arm around her shoulder to stroke her back as he drew her in for a quick hug.

  “Who are we looking for?” he asked, releasing her.

  “Maddie and Spartacus.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Maddie’s the Siamese I got just before my diagnosis. She’s been through everything with me. And Spartacus—you met him.”

  “Three legs, stripy tail, likes to think he’s a tough guy,” Reid said.

  “Yeah.” She managed a weak smile, her mind already conjuring up images of the septic bites and scratches Spartacus had suffered from the teeth and claws of the neighborhood’s bigger toms.

  Out of her peripheral vision she glimpsed Hugh stalking across her lawn to his car. She didn’t follow his path across the sidewalk, but instead focused on Reid.

  “Maddie has absolutely no road sense and Spartacus will be spoiling for a fight. That’s why I keep them inside at night.” She shrugged. “Crazy cat lady, that’s me.”

  “It’s not crazy to want to keep the things you love from pain.” His gaze skimmed around her yard as he spoke, and she got the feeling he wasn’t only talking about animals.

  Hugh’s car started with a roar and peeled away from the curb. One less spoiling-for-a-fight male to deal with. Suited her just fine.

  She unclipped the little flashlight from the key chain and held it out to him. “I’ll grab a bigger one from inside. Can you check around the back for Spartacus?”

  He took the flashlight and shone it around. “How far can a three-legged cat go?”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said dryly and hurried inside.

  Reid was nowhere to be seen when she returned to the yard with her cat-spotting flashlight and a slice of sandwich ham. A little bribery never hurt. She opted to look for Maddie first as she knew what the sneaky Siamese’s favorite tree was and Reid had no chance of coaxing her down from it. Sure enough, Maddie was tucked into the high branches of a kōwhai watching Darby with suspicious eyes. Fortunately, the proffered ham did the trick and Maddie jumped nimbly from branch to branch until Darby could snatch her up. She dropped Maddie and the ham back inside—shut in the laundry room along with Duke, who had zero interest in going out in the cold and wet.

  At least it’d stopped raining. Darby went outside again to find Reid. He was around the back of her house, crouched by a gap in the clapboards that led to a crawlspace beneath the house.

  “Pretty sure he’s under there,” Reid said when she lowered herself to crouch beside him.

  Mud squelched under her shoes as she directed the bigger flashlight beam into the hole. From the far side of the house, green glowing eyes stared back at her.

  “Spartacus,” she called. “Come on, baby.” She added kissing noises.

  Spartacus didn’t move.

  A gruff chuckle beside her had her head whipping around.

  “Nice try,” Reid said, “but it looks as if the big guy isn’t as hot for you as Hugh was earlier.”

  “Were you spying on us?” Now she knew Spartacus was effectively trapped, she had a moment to deliberate on Reid’s sudden appearance.

  “It was a bit hard to miss your date’s smooth moves as he nearly knocked you through your front door.”

  Not a squeak of decipherable emotion colored Reid’s tone now, even though he’d sounded on the verge of some serious ass-kicking when he’d first arrived.

  “Jealous that we got carried away in the moment?” she asked sweetly.

  “Perhaps a little thankful you didn’t feel the urge to grind my metacarpals to dust when you and I got carried away.”

  And, boy, had they got carried away.

  Her cheeks detonated and the only thing that came out of her mouth was a pained “Hmmph.” More painfully humiliating than that was now she couldn’t stop thinking of kissing him again.

  “I’ll get another slice of ham.” She passed him the bigger flashlight and stood. “You stand guard and make sure he doesn’t make a run for it.”

  After another trip to the fridge, she returned to find that once again Reid had disappeared.

  “Dammit, I told you to—”

  A male grunt of irritation followed by a string of four-letter words shot out of the crawlspace hole.

  No—he hadn’t, had he?

  “Gotcha,” came Reid’s triumphant voice from the darkness.

  Then a hiss like a cheesed-off rattlesnake and a, “Take it like a man, mate, and admit defeat.”

  Moments later, Reid’s head popped out of the crawlspace, with Spartacus tucked against his chest, the cat’s tail like a bottlebrush. When the rest of Reid appeared, Darby didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. His once-white shirt was now covered in brown paw prints, and mud soaked through his dress pants from the knees down to his caked shoes.

  He glanced up at her. “I don’t think he likes me very much right now.” Then he smiled, and Darby’s heart melted into a gooey mush.

  Scarily, she liked him enough for both of them.

  “You’d better come inside and clean up,” she said.

  If there was a right or a wrong way to seduce a guy using your shower to scrub off mud and cat hair, Darby could have used a dummy’s guide to it.

  Fidgeting outside her bathroom, she pressed her ear to the door. Watery splashing sounds came from beyond it, and behind her the watery sudsy sounds of her washing machine laundering Reid’s shirt. His pants, much to her dismay, were dry-clean only.

  She moistened parched lips and made yet another attempt to scold herself out of the urge to open the unlocked bathroom door. That’s right, unlocked. After Reid had passed his shirt out to her—and she’d rolled her tongue back in her mouth at the glimpse of him dressed in only one of her fluffy blue towels—he’d smiled a come-hither smile and gently shut the door in her face. At least, she interpreted the flash of his straight white teeth and the gleam in his eyes as an invitation. Surely the absence of a click while she gawped at the door meant come on in in guy speak.

  Or did it? And more importantly, was it a little egotistical for her to think Reid might want to sex her up in her circa-1970s shower as much as she wanted him to? Really wanted him to, her body tossed into the mix. Defeating cancer had taught her that sometimes her body didn’t get to decide the fate of Darby Livingston. Not when her mind, her heart, and her soul were determined to live. It was growing impossible to deny herself when her body had joined forces with her heart and soul in wanting Reid, the three of them outvoting her brain, which still worried like a helicopter parent that she was walking on thin ice.

  She leaned into the bathroom door, sniffing at the clean smell of soap escaping with the steam under it. Then she thunked her forehead against it. Twice, for good measure.

  “You can come in if you need something,” Reid called. “The door’s unlocked.”

  Ohgodohgodohgod.

  Yes or no, Darby? Her stomach swooped and dived while her brain helpfully provided the earworm of the Jeopardy theme.

  Darby opened the door and slid inside, leaving the door ajar in case she needed to make a hasty exit. Thanks to the bathroom’s dodgy extractor fan, the mirror was steamed up. And since the decor was old school, the frosted and almost opaque shower stall doors p
rovided ample privacy. Which was just as well, because her imagination had conjured up all sorts of adults-only images, like Reid using her body wash to spread bubbles over all himself, then transferring those bubbles to her while she clung to him like plastic wrap.

  “Um, I just wanted to swill some mouthwash to get the Hugh taste out of my mouth.”

  Utter facepalm. Mentioning she’d just had another man’s tongue halfway down her throat? Not one of her finest seductive opening lines.

  But Reid laughed. “Fair enough.”

  Which could mean anything at all, including you’re delusional if you think now is an appropriate time to jump my bones or get naked and get in here.

  Darby’s bare toes squeaked a little on the wooden floorboards as she eased in front of the basin and opened the vanity cabinet for the mouthwash.

  “So Hugh wasn’t a good kisser?” came from the shower stall.

  Curiosity with an edge of something sharper nettled his tone.

  Next to the bottle of mouthwash was a plastic container filled with her hoarder-gene stash of shampoo, conditioner, and fancy moisturiser samples. Oh, and a couple of condoms.

  Dear Lord, a sign if ever there was one.

  “Never said that.” Good being purely objective. There were probably some women who liked Hugh’s tonsil-tickling enthusiasm.

  She snatched up the Listerine, but it took two attempts of her shaky fingers to open the childproof cap. “And speaking of never,” she continued. “You never did explain why you were here tonight.”

  There was silence from the shower, and a sideways glance revealed that the fuzzy silhouette behind the frosted glass had stilled. She poured a measure of mouthwash into the cap, swirled it around her mouth, and spat into the basin.

  “I came here for you,” he said after a few more endless seconds of water beating against glass. “To make sure you got home safely.”

  The burst of bubbles and rainbows that shot through her at the first part of his sentence fizzled out at the second. “Gentlemanly of you.”