“We both know you don’t do casual,” her friend said quietly. “And we both know he’s not Richard.”
That was the thing when you let people in. They saw who you really were, so there was no point pretending otherwise. “I won’t ask how you knew I was comparing.”
“There’s no comparison really, is there?” Marianne sipped her champagne. “For better or for worse, you’re not the same woman you were five years ago.”
“That woman could’ve had an all-night shag session with a stranger and not worried about the consequences the next day,” Darby said morosely.
Marianne snorted into her glass. Then she set it down. “What I mean is, before cancer the only concern you had with long-term relationships was whether or not you could live with a man who thought farting in bed and holding the covers over your head was the ultimate prank. Or you thought about de-facto versus married life, three kids versus one of each, suburbs versus the city, this guy or shop around a bit more. Am I close?”
Darby nodded.
“But after cancer your perspective naturally changes, and because we’re all so different I can only surmise what sort of worries suddenly sprouted like weeds in your pristine garden,” Marianne continued. “You’ve shared some of them with the group, but I suspect there are some that are buried way down deep. They’ll send out nasty little roots if you don’t control them, and they’ll take over and strangle every last flower you’re trying to grow.”
“Ever considered booting Warren off the pulpit to take over preaching?” She fiddled with the edge of her placemat. “I don’t want another Richard who’ll flake on me, not when there’s a chance of another battle on the horizon.” Darby’s stomach sank to her toes. “And before you jump to Reid’s defense—it’s one thing to see it through to the end with a family member; it takes something extraordinary to stick it out with someone you’ve been intimate with.”
“Maybe he is extraordinary,” Marianne argued. “Or maybe when you love someone the way Warren loves me it isn’t so much of a burden to stick around as it is a privilege to honor the in sickness and in health vow.”
“Your man is a total unicorn, though. The big guy upstairs broke the mold when he made Warren.”
Marianne grinned. “I’ll tell him he’s a rainbow-striped unicorn in bed tonight.”
“Please,” Darby held out a palm, spotting the server out of the corner of her eye. “No TMI jokes about the size of his horn. Breakfast is on its way.”
They tucked into their breakfast, conversation switching easily to safer topics like Marianne’s kids and a new online store that made funky retro dresses. Just when Darby started to relax, Marianne raised her glass for a toast.
“To good friends, good food, and unicorns,” she said.
Darby managed a casual smile and tapped her glass to Marianne’s. Her heart gave a little blip as the picture of Reid stroking her face with a tenderness that’d unnerved her popped into her mind.
“I’m gonna say one more thing and then I’ll zip it.” Marianne’s gaze grew soft and serious. “Not all unicorns have horns and sparkle, hon. On the outside, some look just like an ordinary horse.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” Darby said lightly and drained the rest of her champagne.
But really, a twenty-eight-year-old woman had to grow up sometime and stop believing in fairy tales. Didn’t she?
Three days after he’d fled Darby’s bed like a teenage boy on his first walk of shame, Reid wasn’t feeling that good about himself. He also, much as he hated to admit it, missed her with the kind of insanity akin to missing chocolate when you mistakenly tried a sugar-free fast.
Thanks to an inability to keep restlessness at bay, he’d spent painstaking hours late into the night for the last three nights cutting out all the costumes for Darby’s play. He had the perfect excuse to contact her, and that morning he’d sent a text asking if she was free that evening to help. She’d replied with polite agreement. Only Darby could make a simple line of text—Sure. See you at seven—seem like it was layered with accusation. His fingers had hovered over the phone. Should he reply and tell her to come earlier and he’d order takeout? Tell her to bring her toothbrush because he wasn’t sure if he could let her leave after a few hours being dazzled in her presence?
Bloody hell.
Forgive the sexism, but God, he was acting like such a girl.
Reid paced around the workshop at ten to seven. He checked and rechecked the piles of cut fabric pieces he’d sorted for Darby to tackle, made sure her workstation had scissors to clip threads and an abundance of pins, and fussed with the sound system, trying to decide if playing Sam Smith would give her the wrong impression. Laura had come to see him on her way out for the evening, taken one look at his face, and U-turned swiftly for the front door.
A lifetime later, the shrill buzz of the doorbell blasted through the workroom. Forcing his legs to move slower than the run they wanted to break into, Reid crossed the floor, heart beating like a kettle drum.
Darby stood on the doorstep, her face flushed with evening chill, a wary smile on her face that punched him in the solar plexus. She wore dark leggings and her zipped-up puffy jacket, with a knitted scarf wound around her neck. One of her earrings had caught on a strand of wool. Because of the wary smile, he resisted the urge to unhook the earring and cup her jaw.
A snuffling at ground level caught his attention. Duke continued his nasal examination of the doorstep around Darby’s feet.
She followed his gaze. “Sorry, he’s a little listless tonight and I didn’t want to leave him alone for hours. I can put him in my car, if you prefer.”
Duke plopped his butt on the concrete and gave him a puppy-eyed look that Reid translated to: Love my owner; love me. Which was ridiculous, because he wasn’t in love with Duke’s owner. And why the hell was he even thinking about love?
“Bring him in. It’s too cold out there tonight,” he found himself saying.
“Thanks! I’ll grab his bed from the car. Stay, Duke.” Darby thrust the dog’s leash into his hand and spun around, dashing back along the sidewalk.
Duke’s gaze locked onto her retreating figure and the twitch of her shapely ass. Or maybe that was just Reid. He glanced down at the little dog who hadn’t shifted an inch, just continued to wait and watch for Darby’s return. Duke whined, a heartfelt canine wistfulness that resonated with Reid.
“Tell me about it, mate,” he said, well aware of how his pulse was gathering speed as he spotted Darby walking back from her car with a dog bed in her arms.
Darby settled Duke with a bowl of water and his bed near one of the workshop’s wall heaters, then she and Reid got to work.
Sticking to safe topics like seam allowances, iron temperatures, and how was work this week?, they slid into an almost comfortable rhythm. Darby was quick to learn the few slightly more complicated techniques he showed her for working with delicate fabrics, and like him, she had a small perfectionist streak that initially had her unpicking and redoing any section she deemed unfit.
“Don’t get carried away,” he said after he noticed her unpicking the stitches on the same seam for the third time. He swiveled his chair to face her. “We’re not making haute couture.”
She glanced up from where she sat hunched over the sewing machine, her teeth tugging at her full lower lip. Huffing out a sigh, she placed the bunched-up fabric down on the machine bed and stretched her arms above her head. “My mum always says if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”
Her breasts shifted beneath her shirt, pushing the gaps between buttons open so he caught a glimpse of something black and silky.
Darby was worth doing and worth doing right. Hell yeah.
He shifted on his chair, but changing positions didn’t alleviate the rapid hardening taking place beneath his jeans. His dick wanted no part in the hands off from now on vow he’d made leaving Darby’s bed during the weekend.
“Tell me about your family,” he sai
d.
A nice, neutral subject he could converse on without cutting off the circulation in his groin.
“We’re boringly normal.” Darby picked up the bunched fabric of Cinderella’s underskirt and resumed attacking the uneven row of stitches. Perfect. A woman with a sharp object in her hands made focusing on the consequences of jumping her bones less appealing. Or maybe more.
“Mum, dad, siblings?” he asked.
“An older sister who lives a five-minute drive away from our parents with her husband and two kids. My other sister, Talia, is the eldest and a total overachiever. Perfect grades in law school, perfect job offer with a top law firm in Auckland, perfect damn hair, too. Kristine and I hate her.” Her mouth quirked up and she gave a little laugh. “Mum’s a high school guidance counselor. Dad’s a grown-up computer geek—IT manager by day, online gaming addict by night. They’re like chalk and cheese, but they’ve been married thirty-five years and somehow they make it work.”
He loved the way her eyes shone when she talked about her family. Then her smile slipped a notch.
“Talia quit her job in Auckland and moved back home after my diagnosis. I begged her not to but she wouldn’t listen, insisting she’d had enough of commuting through rush-hour traffic and Aucklanders to last her a lifetime. She got a part-time job at a small firm in town and divided her time between it and me and taking me to appointments. She also rented a house close to the hospital and insisted I move in with her so I wasn’t tempted to murder our parents with their excessive smothering.” She gave a roll of her eyes, but a tear pearled on her lower lashes and slipped over the edge. “Pretty sure taking the perfect sister award was her overall game plan, though.”
“God, what a cow,” he said.
She laughed, this time a real laugh that rolled out of her and shimmied over his skin. Her gaze locked with his as she smudged her knuckles across her cheek, nearly poking out her eye with the unpicker.
“You didn’t have anyone to help with your mum?” she asked. “No other family?”
His stomach contracted into a leaden ball. “Just an aunt—my mother’s younger sister.”
Darby’s gaze darted from his face toward the kitchenette and back again. “The aunt that’s getting married? I saw the wedding invitation behind the trash can.”
The invitation that was still behind the trash can because he still couldn’t seem to throw it out. “Yeah, that aunt.”
She set down the unpicker and the underskirt. “I could be your plus-one, you know.”
“You’re inviting yourself to my aunt’s wedding?”
“Got a problem with it?” She stood and walked around to lean a hip against the back of the sturdy sewing machine bed, only a few delicious inches away from him. “I won’t get falling-down drunk or eat with my fingers. And I scrub up pretty well, you know.”
“I know.”
Hell yeah, he knew. But taking Darby to a wedding—and not just to any wedding, but his only remaining blood relative’s wedding—meant something. He hesitated, grappling with what that something meant. At the very least his aunt would understand that Darby was more than just a casual guest on his arm so he didn’t have to attend alone. Whenever he visited her, he always went solo, so she’d notice.
“Or is it me?” she asked. Any sharper and her gaze would slice through him easier than the unpicker that was too close for comfort near her left hand. “Ah. You don’t want to take me in case your aunt gets the wrong idea about us.”
Damn. He was in deeper trouble than he realized if Darby could read his mind. A muscle twitched in his jaw but he thought he managed to keep a neutral expression on his face. “Never said I didn’t want to take you.”
Though now he’d cornered himself into bloody well going since if he refused, Darby would draw all sorts of conclusions.
“But a family wedding is more of a girlfriend thing than a take your one-night stand kind of thing, right?” Her mouth thinned for a moment and Reid could almost see her forcing her facial muscles to relax. “It’s okay.” Her smile was flat and false. “I get it. My family would have a hundred and one questions if I brought you to—”
The rattle of wheels on concrete as he suddenly stood cut Darby off. Then he was on her—lips and hands on her—before she could recover her wits. He kissed her, claiming her mouth with no room for argument or reproach for the bruising intensity of the kiss. Pulling her upright, he dragged her flush against him, her breasts crushing into his chest. The taste of her—sweet raspberries from the tea she’d made earlier—and the heat of her tongue tangling with his had him rock hard in seconds. He boosted her onto the sturdy machine bed and stepped between her thighs. Cinderella’s skirt whispered to the floor, followed by the plink of the unpicker and the louder thunk of scissors. He barely noticed as they continued to kiss each other as if they were rivals competing on the home stretch of a race.
He’d just gotten her top out from under her butt so he could access her silky skin beneath when a high-pitched bark caused him to freeze. He broke the kiss and turned an evil eye on Duke, who stood a few yards away watching them. Darby uttered a low moan of protest, obviously recovering from the kiss-drunk haze he’d had her in moments ago. The dog cocked his head and barked again, this time a lower-pitched whuff. As though he were checking on the purity of Reid’s intentions.
Spoiler: They weren’t pure.
“Back to bed, mate,” he said. “You’ll give me performance anxiety.”
A snort of laughter puffed against his throat. Then her hand slid between them, stroking the length of him through a layer of denim. “Really? I kinda think you enjoy the spotlight.”
Reid found it hard to catch his breath long enough to order Duke back into his bed, but somehow he did—and thank the stars above, after a canine snort of resignation, the dog wandered out of sight. He guessed to his bed, but honestly he didn’t know as he was seeing stars and damn fireworks from the touch of Darby’s hand.
The palms he’d been skimming down Darby’s arms tightened on her elbows. While he still had the function of constructing sentences that made actual sense, he needed to make one thing clear. “You’re not a one-night stand—we’re more than one night.”
Her hands froze, fingers still half curled around his erection. She pulled back, the question of what they were clear in her blue eyes. A description of the complexities of what they actually were was beyond him. Girlfriend seemed juvenile, lover was nauseating, and significant other stiff and formal.
Together. It was as good a description as any. They were together. Temporarily, maybe, but there was no denying that together was making him happier than he’d been in a long, long time.
She continued to study him for a few moments longer and then she wriggled off the machine bed, knocking him a few steps backward. His heart plummeted from his chest to his shoes with a jolt like a fairground ride. Had he screwed up so much that she planned to leave? And which way had he screwed up? By stating they were more serious than a quick, mindless screw? Or by his inability to define their relationship?
Darby slipped from between the two sewing machines and held out her hand. He took it, blood punching through him so rapidly he felt a little light-headed since most of his blood supply hadn’t left his groin. She gave his hand a tug and he walked with her.
In the direction of his bedroom.
He manfully resisted a fist pump when she paused to tell Duke to go to sleep.
“Since we’re not a one-night stand,” she said, pushing open his bedroom door, “best two out of three?”
“Deal.”
Reid swept her off her feet into his room and kicked the door shut—in case Duke got any ideas of a free peep show. He carried her over to his big bed and tumbled them onto it, Darby laughing as the bed creaked in protest.
Cupping her face in his hands, he stared down at her a moment longer before he lowered his mouth to hers, sinking into a kiss that made a liar out of him. Best two out of three wouldn’t nearly be long enough.
Chapter 13
In Reid’s bathroom, Darby peeled off her scrubs and shimmied into a black tulle half slip, and then wriggled into the Ugly Stepsister’s ball gown. He’d laughed when she’d insisted on getting changed in there, because for the past week she’d spent every spare moment at his sewing machine or in his bed. That thought caused some seismic reactions in her ovaries.
She scrunched her face at the bathroom mirror, the Darby in the reflection with her kiss-reddened mouth and shiny eyes returning the gesture.
Ugly stepsister, my butt.
She felt invincibly beautiful and fiercely sexual. Craved, even, by a man who only had to look at her a certain way to magically teleport them both to the nearest horizontal, or vertical, surface.
And yet she wasn’t ready for him to see her swapping her vet scrubs and comfortable work panties—ones that actually covered her cheeks and didn’t ride up—for the sexy lace pair she’d brought in her handbag. Even after a couple of nights where she’d given in to temptation and stayed over, she wasn’t comfortable brushing her teeth in the bathroom with him sharing the sink, or worse, witnessing her swallowing her medication that she’d continue to take for the foreseeable future.
A tap came on the other side of the bathroom door. “You done? The night’s a-wasting.”
A night where they’d end up between the sheets again.
“One more minute.” She was pleased with the light tone in her voice, but the reflected Darby squeezed her eyes shut.
Best two out of three, she’d said. Then it became an inside joke with best three out of four, best four out of five—best out of ten. They’d laugh together, eat together, sew together, sleep together. They’d talk about their childhoods, their loves and hates and books that never should’ve made it to the big screen. They’d talk about their families and past relationships, and Reid even opened up a little more about his mum’s illness.
But they didn’t talk about Reid’s aunt’s wedding again or if plans for this year’s Christmas Day lunch would include the other. They didn’t talk about how Darby’s cancer-free verdict was on the horizon or that, even then, it didn’t mean she had endless Christmas Day lunches up her sleeve.
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