Love You

by Stacy Finz

  “Nah, it wasn’t like that. But, Darcy, be careful about whose apartment you break into. It’s really not advisable to solicit sex that way.”

  “You think?” She gave him another classic eye roll. “I only did it with you because I thought you’d appreciate the element of surprise.”

  Before Britney, before he’d started reevaluating the trajectory of his life, he probably would’ve appreciated it—and her—way too much. But the times they were a-changing. It was high past the point to show the world that Win Garner had substance, that there was more to him than what everyone chose to see.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said.

  “I drove.” She dangled her shoes from her finger, found her purse on the floor by the bed, and lifted her face to his chest, blinking a few times.

  He went back inside his closet for a shirt. “We’ll take your car and I’ll jog home.” It was only about three miles.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like I’m drunk.”

  He’d sort of wondered, only because this was so uncharacteristic for Darcy.

  “I’ll at least walk you out.” Glory Junction was a safe town but California had its share of kooks, even in rural areas.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m good.”

  He ignored her and found a pair of flip-flops near the couch, grabbed his key ring off the tiny kitchen counter, and put his hand at the small of her back. She led him to her car, which was parked on the street in the front of his complex. Four attached Spanish-style studios that made a square around a grassy courtyard. Not quite the big family home he’d come from just a few miles down the road but centrally located so that he could walk or ride his bike to Garner Adventure on Main Street.

  “Careful,” he said because she was barefoot and the sidewalk was uneven. “No moon tonight.”

  She didn’t respond, which made things even more awkward than they already were. He searched for something humorous to say that might put her at ease but couldn’t think of anything off the top of his head.

  When they got to her Volkswagen, she tugged the T-shirt down, even though it already fell to her knees, and gazed up at him. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming here like this. You’re not going to tell anyone, right?”

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  “Promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.” He held up his right arm and did the three-finger salute. And then for no reason at all he touched her lips with his and kissed her.

  Chapter Two

  In and out, in and out. Darcy practiced her breathing exercises on the drive home. Exactly the way her therapist had taught her. A year of counseling and she still needed to use the technique to calm herself. And right now, she was one lungful away from a full-blown panic attack.

  Of all the boneheaded moves, stuffing herself into a Victoria’s Secret scrap of lace, breaking into Win’s house, and begging him to do her was right up there with … her wedding night. But she didn’t want to go there. She’d had enough humiliation in the last hour. No need to reminisce about years past.

  She should’ve known better than to make a fool of herself over a guy who could spend the night with a supermodel if he wanted to. But of all the men she knew, Win was perfect for what she had in mind. A one-night or even better, a one-month, stand with her own personal scholar of the Kama Sutra. His reputation as a man who knew his way around a woman’s body preceded him.

  And while he could charm Darcy’s seventy-eight-year-old nana out of her granny panties with just one smile, he wasn’t the type of guy someone like her could get serious about, which made him all the more suitable. True, his buff bod, chiseled features, and deep blue eyes were the stuff of underwear commercials, she didn’t want to be a nurse maid to a man-child.

  But all she’d gotten for her mortifying stunt was a pity kiss, a sort of consolation prize for the weird girl who answered the phones at his family’s adventure company and was delusional enough to throw herself at him. How would she ever face him again?

  Her cell phone rang and despite Win’s rejection, it was hard to be angry with a man who called to make sure her five-minute drive home had gone safely. Who else could it be at this ungodly hour? She pulled into her grandmother’s driveway and answered because it would be petty not to.

  “Hello.”

  “Do you know where my red tie with the blue stripes is? I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it.”

  “Lewis? Is that you? It’s three o’clock in the morning.” She kicked herself for not checking caller ID first.

  He sighed. “Sorry. You were always a night owl so I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

  Well, she did mind. Divorce meant never having to say find your own goddamned tie. “Last time I saw it”—which was a year ago—“it was in the bottom drawer of the Chippendale highboy in the guest room.”

  “Walk with me,” he said and she rolled her eyes.

  Darcy hung on, listening to his breathing as he climbed the stairs and scraped open what sounded like a drawer. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “You’re a peach, Darcy Wallace.”

  Yes, she was, even if she felt like a failure. “Good night, Lewis.” She hung up before he could rope her into something else she didn’t want to do.

  The sprinklers were on and she zigzagged across the cobblestone walkway, trying to dodge getting wet. Unlike the modern monstrosity Darcy had grown up in or the Reno condo she’d left a year ago, Nana’s gardens were filled with flowers. Persian violets, Siberian irises, Oriental poppies, Japanese anemones, and plants Darcy had never heard of.

  Her grandfather had built flower boxes for the clapboard cottage before he died and Nana still spent hours every day tending to her aster, English lavender, and meadow rue. What her grandmother couldn’t manage, the gardener handled. Darcy’s thumb was about as green as a desert summer.

  The bursts of color and sweet fragrances from the yard filled her with happiness. And the cozy cottage was more of a home than any place she’d ever resided. Still, she wished her new life held more excitement. Being a telephone operator by day and sleeping alone every night wasn’t much different than the existence she’d left behind.

  “Darcy, is that you, sweetheart?”

  She cringed, wishing she could’ve snuck in undetected. But Darcy’s grandmother slept in a bedroom on the main floor because the stairs to the master suite had become too difficult for her to manage. “It’s me, Nana. Sorry I woke you. Go back to bed.”

  Her gray-haired grandmother padded into the front room in slippers and took Darcy in from head to toe. “Where are your shoes, sweetheart?”

  “I left them in the car.” It’s not like she would be needing them anytime soon. The last time she’d worn them was to her divorce party, a small affair of one at an expensive restaurant where they’d gotten her order wrong and lost her wrap in the coat check.

  Her grandmother came around to noticing the T-shirt that hung in folds over Darcy’s figure. Lewis’s Tshirts had been tight, stretching across her chest like an ACE bandage. “Was it a swim party, dear?”

  She let out a breath, hating to lie. But how do you tell your grandmother you were making a house call for sex? You didn’t, even if Hilde was the most progressive seventy-eight-year-old she knew.

  “No, Nana, I was working late.” Since Darcy put in a lot of hours at Garner Adventure it wasn’t too far of a stretch, though three in the morning would’ve been an all-time record.

  “Oh?” Hilde clearly wasn’t buying it. But she was good about giving Darcy plenty of personal space so they left it at that. “I made that cake you like if you’re hungry.”

  Chantilly cake. White layer cake with custard filling, whipped cream frosting, and berries from Nana’s garden. The cake and all the other good things Nana made in her kitchen were the reason Darcy had gained six pounds since moving to Glory Junction.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said, and dropped a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. “Good night.”

  *
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  Usually up by seven, Darcy slept in until nine. And despite the adage that things would be better in the morning, they weren’t. She was still sex-deprived and mortified from the night before. So she showered, went downstairs, and cut herself a huge slice of cake, the breakfast of champions. Through the window, she spied Hilde in a big, floppy hat, holding a pair of flower shears, in the garden.

  The house phone rang and when she saw it was Lewis, she let it go. “Why aren’t you picking up your cell phone, Darcy?” he asked on the answering machine recording.

  “Because I’m no longer married to you, Lewis!” she shouted into thin air, and then kicked herself for not having the balls to pick up the phone and tell him to bugger off. For good.

  But Lewis wasn’t really a bad guy and the things that had happened between them were just as much her fault as his. She wanted to stay friends, she really did. But she no longer wanted to be his keeper. Because being Lewis’s keeper—and wife—was a full-time job without any benefits. None at all.

  She thought about putting in a few hours at GA. But on a Sunday she might run into Win. The spring-summer season was kicking in and Win had back-to-back tours to guide. She knew because she did most of the scheduling at the adventure company when she wasn’t fielding phone calls and making doughnut runs. The Garners each had a legendary sweet tooth and an unbelievable metabolism. Probably from all the physical activity they did. Anyway, going to the office today was a bad idea.

  She’d have to face Win eventually but today … there was cake.

  *

  Monday morning, she waited for her number to be called at Tart Me Up, Glory Junction’s premier bakery. GA’s meeting was at nine, which meant the pastries had to be in the conference room by 8:55, sharp. It was an extremely challenging job. So challenging that an eight-year-old could do it while standing on her head. Six months ago, she’d asked for a promotion. And here she was, still waiting for pastries.

  It wasn’t that TJ, her boss, was a jerk. In fact, he was the best supervisor she’d ever worked for. High on praise, low on micromanaging. And like all the Garners, he was nice to look at. And taken by the equally adorable Deb Bennett, who also worked at GA. The company, though highly successful, was small and so was its budget. For that reason, things like promotions moved up the family chain at a glacial pace.

  In the meantime, she tried to dazzle everyone with her extraordinary organizational skills. And they were extraordinary. It was the reason Lewis had fallen in love with her. At least that’s what he’d told her on the day he’d proposed as she drove his Volvo station wagon through the Buggy Bath Car Wash on Jefferson Street. He’d made her take the wheel because car washes gave him claustrophobia. As did movie theaters, nice restaurants, vacations, or any other place she wanted to go. So, for the next two years she ran his office and his home, organizing his life right down to his sock drawer. Then one morning, after one empty bed too many, she decided this was no life. No life at all.

  In fact, it mirrored her parents’ loveless marriage and the cold, soulless home she’d grown up in. So she filed for divorce, taking only her clothes and severance pay, and moved in with Nana, hoping to start over and find the kind of fulfillment she never did with Lewis.

  But she’d been in Glory Junction a year now and hadn’t dated once. No one had even asked for her phone number. She’d thought about joining a dating site but one look at the local pool—a sixty-eight-year-old widowed sheep rancher, a twenty-two-year-old avid collector of spherical objects, and a fifty-six-year-old lesbian—and she bagged the idea. The age-appropriate men weren’t interested in her, not even a little.

  And Win had been downright uninterested, if you didn’t count that pity kiss when he’d walked her to her car. She was starting to think she was the problem, not Lewis. Maybe he’d been a cold fish because she lacked any kind of sexual appeal. It wasn’t as if she was ugly. She had nice blond hair that was usually clean and tidy, big blue eyes that netted her plenty of compliments, and dimples that made her look younger than her thirty-one years. She might be out of shape and fifteen pounds heavier than a woman five-foot, two-inches tall ought to be, according to the body-mass-index chart at her doctor’s office, but no worse off than most women her age.

  The kid behind the counter called her number and Darcy gave him her pastry order. Rachel Johnson, the baker and proprietor of Tart Me Up, came out of the kitchen to say hi.

  “You must be stocking up for the morning meeting at GA,” she said, and threw a few extra cinnamon buns into the box. When women weren’t throwing themselves at the Garner brothers, they were giving them free baked goods.

  “Yep,” Darcy responded, and from the corner of her eye she saw Boden Farmer take a number from the ticket dispenser. The owner of Old Glory, the local watering hole, was gorgeous in a Sons of Anarchy kind of way. Tall, ripped, and a little dangerous-looking in his biker boots and chains. And although he was single and roughly the same age as Darcy, he’d never given her a second look.

  Rachel handed her the box of goodies over the counter. Darcy thanked her and took her own morning pastry to one of the empty tables. She had fifteen minutes until the meeting started and wanted to eat in peace and quiet. Munching on her cheese Danish, she watched Rachel and the counter kid swiftly serve food and coffee to a growing line of customers. When Boden’s number was called he dropped his phone into his back pocket and gave his order. Never once did he acknowledge Darcy, which ordinarily she would’ve accepted as par for the course. But today it made her feel even more invisible than she usually felt.

  She finished eating and was halfway to the door with her pastry box when she worked up the courage to say something. Anything. Fine morning we’re having, Boden. Or … I’ve been in your bar a million times to pick up food orders and you can’t even greet me? Wave? Nod your head in my direction?

  She spun around, planning to confront him, and smacked into something hard. The impact alone would’ve smarted enough, except the burn of hot liquid dripping down her sundress distracted her.

  “Ah, jeez, I’m sorry.” Boden righted her with one strong arm, put down the spilled cup of coffee with the other, and grabbed a wad of napkins from the condiment bar. “Are you okay?”

  Darcy plucked the top of her dress away from her chest. “It was my fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going … I’ll pay for your coffee.”

  “Don’t worry about the coffee.” He started to pat her down with a towel Rachel had brought from behind the counter and grimaced. “Did it scald you?”

  “I have some aloe vera ointment in the first-aid kit. Let me get it,” Rachel said, and Darcy wanted to crawl under the nearest table.

  “I’m fine. Really. What about you?” The coffee had missed Boden’s white T-shirt but had splattered all over his boots. She put down the box, took the towel from him, crouched down, and tried to wipe them dry.

  He gently tugged her up. “I’ve got it.”

  “But your boots,” she argued, “they’ll be ruined.”

  “Darcy, I slosh beer on them all day and night.”

  Rachel returned with the ointment and began dabbing it on Darcy’s chest in the middle of the bakery while the counter kid mopped up the mess. At that moment, she wished she could curl up and die. Then she suddenly remembered the time.

  “I’ve got to go.” The meeting. She’d be late.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” Rachel gave Darcy’s dress one final swipe with the towel. The coffee was already starting to dry, leaving a brown stain in the center of her boobs. Great.

  “I’m good,” she said, and grabbed the pastry carton, jogging the two blocks to Garner Adventure.

  By the time she walked in the door she was out of breath and sweaty from the early sunshine beaming down on the newly blacktopped road. Only nine and it was almost eighty degrees. She was on her way to the conference room to leave off the pastries before seeing what she could do about her dress when she bumped into Win, capping off her perfect morning.

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bsp; He of course looked breathtakingly mussed, like a model in a billboard, advertising a singles gym. A Garner Brothers T-shirt, similar to the one he’d lent her, and a pair of long Adidas shorts, and lots of tan, golden skin.

  “What happened to you?” He eyed her breasts and not in a good way.

  “Nothing,” she said, and tried to walk away.

  He caught her arm and flashed his super-white smile. “We still friends?”

  “I guess,” she said, though she didn’t know if she would’ve ever gone so far as to call them friends. Acquaintances, coworkers, feeder of his cat.

  “You guess? What kind of answer is that?” He folded his arms over his mile-wide chest, looking more confused than perturbed.

  “I just don’t know that we were ever pals, that’s all.” Because if you were really my friend you would’ve done me when I needed it the most.

  “Bullshit! I’m your friend and you’re my friend. We’re gonna start hanging out.”

  “No, we’re not.” She tried to walk away but he wouldn’t let her.

  “I’ve got tickets to the Reno Rodeo, box seats one of our clients gave me. Wanna come with me?”

  “Uh, A) I hate rodeos, B) why me, you couldn’t get anyone else to go? And C) You don’t have to be nice to me just because you kicked me out of your bed.” This last part she said in a whisper, not wanting TJ or Deb to hear. Win wasn’t as conscientious.

  “I didn’t kick you out of my bed.” He had the audacity to grin, then give her a slow once-over. The rat. “You could’ve stayed if you wanted but you chose to leave.”

  “What was the point of staying?” Once he’d turned her down, she’d had the sudden urge to clean and organize his apartment. A habit she was trying to break, even if his place was a disaster.

  He shrugged. “We could’ve talked.”

  That was the thing about Win, he probably meant it. He was as nice as he was good-looking. Darcy had seen him interact with clients. He was always accommodating with the demanding ones, encouraging with the less-than-athletic ones, and patient with the overeager ones. That’s why it hurt so much that he hadn’t granted her one small favor. Was she that bad? That unappealing?