by Stacy Finz
Her heart stopped. “Dad?”
He didn’t say anything, letting the silence envelop them. Her imagination ran wild with all the terrible possibilities. What if it wasn’t her father but Geneva? What if she had cancer? What if it was Nana? No, Darcy would know if it was Nana.
“Your mother and I have filed for legal separation.”
She tried to grasp what he was saying. Of all the things it could’ve been, divorce hadn’t been one of them. Legal separation wasn’t necessarily divorce, she reminded herself.
“Why?” was all she could seem to manage.
He cleared his throat and maybe Darcy was seeing things but his eyes seemed to water. “Because we don’t love each other.”
As far as she knew they never had. Or it had been a strange love, filled with icy indifference. Their relationship had been nothing like Nana’s and Grandpa’s. Sweet, passionate, and enduring. Sometimes it was hard to believe Max Wallace was their son.
A thousand questions swirled in her head. She assumed because Max was here to deliver the news, the breakup was his idea. “Are you moving out?” That would kill her mother, to whom appearances were everything.
“I’m renting a condo. We’ll eventually sell the house.”
Another thing that would kill Geneva. As sterile and vulgar as it was, she loved that house.
“What does Mother say about this?” It explained her impromptu visit to Reno. Darcy had suspected that it had nothing to do with her alleged engagement to Win.
Max picked a piece of lint off his slacks. “She’s not happy about it.”
Because she didn’t want the divorce or because divorces were sad?
“Where will she live?” It was an inane question but Darcy was still parsing her father’s words. Her relationship with Max and Geneva was strained but they were still her parents. The idea of their being apart, separate units, was hard for her to wrap her head around.
“Ah, honey, we haven’t worked out those details.”
Honey? She couldn’t remember the last time her father had called her by an endearment. Possibly never until now. She looked around the house and it suddenly dawned on her that her grandmother wasn’t here.
“Where’s Nana?”
“She went to the store,” he said. “She wanted us to have time alone together.”
“Are you staying the night?”
“No.” He took a long pause. “I have to head back but I wanted to tell you in person.”
“What about Mother?” she asked, and he looked at her like he didn’t understand the question. “Why didn’t she tell me? She was here, you know?”
“I didn’t.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes and she wondered why. What was that about? “It was sudden and I suppose she’s still trying to collect herself.”
How sudden could it be if he already had a condo?
“Was it your idea?” Even though she suspected it was, she wanted to know for sure.
She could feel him squirm under her inspection, then he let out a breath.
“The separation was a mutual decision,” he finally said. “Perhaps tomorrow you could call your mother and lend her your support.”
She nodded, though she didn’t know what she could say that would make it better. She and Geneva weren’t exactly tight. And when Darcy had gone through her own divorce, her mother had pretended that it was a “phase.” That was the ridiculous word she’d used for it. A “phase.” God forbid she tell her friends that her daughter was no longer married to Lewis Snyder, the best a girl like her could hope for.
“Is there any chance you might reconcile?” Darcy asked. The question had been a recurring theme of her breakup with Lewis. At the time, she’d resented it but now she understood why people asked.
“I don’t think so, honey.”
She sucked in a breath, lost for what to say next. This felt worse than leaving Lewis. It felt like a part of her world was crumbling. Granted it wasn’t a world with lots of happy childhood memories, but it was her world nonetheless.
“What did Nana say?”
He shook his head and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “She’s disappointed, I guess.”
Nana had never been a fan of Geneva’s, though she’d never come out and said it. But in those dark teenage years when Darcy had struggled with everything from her weight to incredible shyness, Nana had been her protector against Geneva’s constant put-downs. She’d also blamed Max for not stepping in to stop Geneva’s relentless bullying.
But what was done was done. There was no use looking backward. All Darcy felt now was a jumble of emotions and a melancholy that hollowed her from the inside out.
Max stood up. “I’d like to get back before nightfall.”
Darcy joined him. “You sure you don’t want to stay?”
He pulled her in for a hug, another novelty. “I have an early morning. But let’s get together soon.”
“Of course,” she said but it sounded empty even to her own ears. When had they ever gotten together besides holidays? Never. “I’ll walk you out.”
Nana pulled up the driveway just as Max was leaving and he rolled down his window to say good-bye. Hilde got out of her car and together they watched him disappear down the driveway.
“How are you doing, dear girl?” Nana wrapped her in a hug and Darcy began to cry.
“I don’t know why I’m getting so emotional,” she said, swiping at the tears running down her face. “It’s not like they were happy together. This might be good for them.”
“I think it will be,” Nana said, and held Darcy’s cheeks in her hands. “You too. Maybe they’ll get to know you better.”
Darcy thought that ship had sailed but she didn’t want to dash Nana’s hopes. It was bad enough that her only son and granddaughter had failed at love.
*
After dinner and a long talk with Nana, Darcy found herself sitting in front of Win’s apartment. She told herself she was just checking on his well-being but the truth was hers could use a little TLC. And despite the fact that he was prettier than her, he made her laugh. At least this time when she breached his door, she’d be fully clothed. With pie. She had the rest of Nana’s berry pie.
A TV was on inside his studio; she could see the reflection of a baseball game in the window. Relieved that she wouldn’t be interrupting something important, Darcy took the path to his unit. The smell of fresh-cut grass and a hint of jasmine filled the still night air. And the stray cat that Win wouldn’t admit he’d adopted lay on the sill of an open window, swishing its tail.
Darcy called through the screen door, “Anyone home?”
“Uh, yeah, hang on a sec.”
He came to the door bare-chested and unhooked the latch. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said back.
His eye had turned several shades of black and blue and green and was the size of a Ping-Pong ball. It gave her something to stare at besides his chest, which was something of a work of art in and of itself. Broad and muscled and lightly furred with a happy trail that disappeared behind the waistband of a pair of low-slung jeans.
He hung his hands from the top of the doorframe and stretched and she nearly lost her mind.
“Here.” She handed him the dish. “The rest of the berry pie. I had some fudge too but I ate it on the way over.”
He took the pie to the kitchenette. She couldn’t help herself and started picking up various articles of clothing that had been flung here and there.
“You come over to clean or to eat pie?” He got down two plates and some forks from a drawer. “How big a piece you want?”
“I’m good,” she said, and folded a pair of shorts and put them on top of a pile by his bed. “I ate before I came over.”
His hair was mussed and he ate standing up and even with his Cyclops face he was breathtaking. Just looking at him made her sigh.
He stabbed his fork at her. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You look god-awful.”
He tried to cat
ch a reflection of himself in the microwave glass.
“Don’t look,” she said. “I’m serious, you might throw up.”
“That bad, huh?” His mouth slanted up in an obnoxious grin. “How was work? Anything from FlashTag yet?”
“Nope. The day was pretty uneventful.” Until she’d gotten home—then it had blown up. “What about you?”
“Just hung out here.” He started to rewrap the pie. “You need the dish back right away?”
“You can return it when you’re done.” She made room on the couch by pushing more of his crap to the side and sat down.
He looked around as if he was seeing the apartment through her eyes. “I’m gonna buy something soon.”
“So you said.” She wanted to mention that a new place, just like the old, wouldn’t clean itself. “According to town legend, you, Candace, and Dale are involved in a ménage à trois and they had to take Dale away from Old Glory in a stretcher.”
“Oh yeah.” He cocked a hip against the counter. “Glad to know it wasn’t me on that stretcher.”
“How are you feeling?” She examined his eye again from across the room and let her gaze drop to his chest. No injuries there.
“The doctors say I have two weeks to live.” He bent over the fridge to put the pie away and came around the kitchen to sit next to her, tossing all the debris on the floor. “Did you come over to fool around again? Since I’m dying, I might break with my twelve-step program.”
“Don’t get any ideas. The last time, you didn’t live up to the hype.”
He snorted because he was as conceited as he was good-looking. “Could’ve fooled me. But if that’s true a do-over is in order.”
She laughed because how wonderful to be that damned confident in yourself. “My parents are splitting up. My dad just left after breaking the news.”
“Ah, jeez, Darcy, I’m sorry.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “Was this unexpected?”
“Sort of,” she said, and gazed off into the distance. “They weren’t much of a couple but they’d lived that way for so long I’d just assumed that’s how happiness looked to them.”
“You talk to Geneva?”
“Not yet. I will tomorrow. Anyway, that’s not why I came over.”
He gave her a long, slow perusal and she waited for a wisecrack about her not wearing the teddy or some other sexual innuendo.
“You can talk about it if you want,” he said. “It’s gotta suck to have your parents break up, even as an adult. I know I’d be pretty upset.”
Yes, but his parents were the real deal. His mother still had all her children over to the house on Sundays for dinner. And Gray and Mary Garner loved each other. Anyone who looked at them could tell. Hell, Darcy had seen them holding hands while walking down Main Street like a couple of teenagers. If they suddenly announced that their divorce was imminent, planet Earth would stop spinning on its axis.
“It’s not like that with us. The Wallaces are a stoic lot.”
He held her face in his two hands and her gaze with his blue eyes. “You can leave that stoic shit behind when you’re with me. I won’t tell anyone.”
And that’s when a few mortifying tears dripped down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs. But it was when he took her in his arms that she broke down, crying into that massive chest of his. Big, ugly, racking sobs. His hands moved over her back, rubbing circles, and he rocked her. And it felt so good that she just wanted to stay there, even if it was just for a little while.
It was the last thing she expected of him. Wild, happy-go-lucky playboy Win to give comfort. He was actually good at it, better than anyone she’d ever known, even Nana, who was her best friend.
“I think I’m getting snot on you.” She inched away.
He chuckled and pushed her face back against his chest. “I’m good with bodily fluids. Ah, Darce, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Maybe it’ll be better for everyone concerned, right?”
“Could be.” He brushed his lips over the top of her head.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She closed her eyes.
“Then we’ll talk about something else.” But he didn’t say anything, leaving the door wide open for her. The best part was that he kept rocking her.
She breathed him in. For a shirtless guy who’d been lying around all day, he smelled pretty good. Salty with a hint of that soap he used. He reached over for the remote control and she heard the TV go off.
“You were watching the game.”
“Don’t worry about it, the Giants are having a bad season anyway.”
A long silence stretched between them and it started to feel awkward, especially because Darcy’s face was still buried in Win’s most excellent chest. But she didn’t exactly want to leave his chest, his arms … his apartment. So she just sat there, cuddled against him, thinking of a less depressing topic than her parents’ looming divorce.
“You coming to work tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I’ve got a rock climbing tour first thing in the morning.”
“You’re going to scare off the clients with that eye of yours,” she said.
“I doubt it. It’ll just make me look tough.”
“You’re sort of delusional, you know that, right?” She twisted around to look at him. “You can’t find someone else to guide it?” His eye, if not his whole face, had to hurt.
“Nah. We’re short-staffed as it is. The fresh air will do me good. How about you? Will you be taking your days off?”
She hadn’t really thought about it but it was TJ’s edict that she use her comp days this week and Lewis continued to hound her over doing his data entry. “Probably.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to do your asshole ex’s bidding? Besides being a champion of children of divorce, Win was also, apparently, a mind reader.
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
He got up and she instantly missed the contact. Worse, he found a shirt in one of the many piles cluttering his apartment and put it on.
“Seriously, you’re going to use one of your days off to do more work? That’s just crazy town.”
She laughed because the statement was so quintessentially Win. Why work when you can play?
“It’s my time to do what I like with it,” she said.
“You told me yourself that you’re doing it out of some bizarre sense of duty … or guilt.” He combed his fingers through his hair. “Why? Especially if he’s the one who left you.”
“I left him.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me out,” Win said. “I’m smarter than I look.”
No way was she handing him the single most humiliating scrap of her life on a platter. Not going to happen. Women threw themselves at Win Garner. How would he ever understand that Darcy’s own husband wouldn’t touch her? That most of the time, Lewis had chosen the guest room over their marital bed. And when he did deign to lie next to her, he treated her like a dead fish.
“There’s nothing to explain. He fell out of love with me.” Or never had been in the first place. “And I left him. End of story.”
“Okay.” Win sat at one of the mismatched barstools at his kitchen counter. “Then why work for him?”
“Because we’re still friends. And friends help each other.”
“Not buying it. I saw you with him at the rodeo. I wasn’t getting a strong friend vibe off of you. Just the opposite, in fact.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“The truth.” The side of his mouth slanted up in a wry half grin. “It’ll set you free.”
“It’s boring, Win.” She started to get up and in two long strides he was back at the couch, pushing her down onto the lumpy cushion.
“Forget I asked. Take a look at this house I’m thinking of buying.” He returned to the counter, got his laptop, and brought it over.
She watched as he booted it up, wondering why he w
as so desperate for her company. He plugged in an address and after a few clicks a picture of a log cabin came up on Google.
“What do you think?”
It was hard to tell from a photograph of only the home’s front façade. “Is that the river in the background?” She squinted at the picture.
“Yeah. The house is on River View.”
“Wow. Good location. The house looks decent but it’s not the clearest picture.”
“Reggie Brown owns it. He eats at the Morning Glory all the time. You know him?”
She shook her head. “Why does he want to sell?”
He placed the laptop on the coffee table, next to a Juicery cup and a dirty plate. “His wife died a few years ago and according to Boden, he wants to move into a retirement community. Probably somewhere warmer.”
She got that. Glory Junction’s snowy winters weren’t for everyone. “Can you afford it?” She didn’t want to come right out and ask how much the house was. It seemed crass.
He hitched his shoulders. “Dunno. It’s not officially on the market yet. I’ll have to talk to Reggie about it. You want to look at it with me if he’s willing to give me a preview?”
She loved looking at houses, so yeah. But she thought it was strange that he was asking her. TJ would be a better choice. He was a champion negotiator and like with everything else probably had a good head for real estate.
“If you think I picked up a lot of real estate knowledge working for Lewis, you’d be mistaken,” she said. “I did the books.”
Though a lot of times, Lewis had her run the comps on one of his listings. She’d gotten a pretty good feel for what a place was worth. But that was in Reno, not Glory Junction. In recent years, the prices here had gone through the roof. Nana’s little cottage was probably worth a small fortune. And TJ’s lake house … she could only imagine.
“I can handle that part of it,” Win said. “I just want a woman’s opinion.”
“For your new wife?” All the single women in town wished.