She rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned. “Okay, my turn.” He looked to the ceiling while plastering a dreamy smile on his face. “I was fifteen. Haddie Malone was a couple years older than me. I know most of you didn’t know me back then, but even at fifteen, I had this animal magnetism that ladies found irresistible. Tell ’em, Darcy.”
She huffed. “He was something, all right.”
He winked at her sarcasm and continued. “It was right after school let out, and she asked if I could walk her home. When we got to her door, without saying a word, she grabbed my arm and yanked me inside. And ladies, she was all over me like white on rice. We fumbled toward the couch in the sitting room, and that’s where Haddie Malone had her wicked way with me.”
Jessi and Mallory giggled while Quinn stifled a smile, blushing rosy pink. Darcy looked bored.
“Probably still considers me the one who got away.” Sean gave an exaggerated, dreamy sigh.
“Got away without getting her off maybe,” Darcy taunted, smiling at him.
“Oh, she got off. Believe you me.” He smirked back.
Grumbles floated in from the living room as Ewan got up from the couch.
“Coming to play, Ewan? Who popped your cherry?”
Ewan, not surprisingly, ignored him. He came over to the table and, with one clean swoop, hooked Quinn behind the back and underneath her knees and lifted her in his arms.
“Time’s up,” he muttered as he turned and headed down the hall, presumably toward her bedroom. Quinn grinned at her caveman and gave a weak wave to the rest of them before disappearing through a door.
Mallory cleared her throat. “Why can’t I find a guy who picks me up and carries me to bed?”
Sean looked at the woman and couldn’t help but laugh. That was the kind of thing that women liked? Being manhandled?
“Ewan’s one small step above Neanderthal. That gets your panties wet?” he asked.
He heard Darcy snort with laughter. Mallory, looking dazed, was still staring down the hallway after Ewan and Quinn.
“We better be going,” Jessi said. “Darcy, thanks for having us. Sean, always good to see you.”
He nodded to both Jessi and Mallory as they went to collect their coats. Darcy got up to gather the empty glasses that were strewn across the table.
“Here, Darce, I’ll get these,” he offered, taking the glasses from her hands.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. It’s the least I can do for you letting me crash on your couch tonight.”
She stilled and stared at him, drawing her mouth into a straight line. She looked over at the couch and back at him. “You want to stay here? Tonight?”
He laughed at her confusion. “Is that okay?”
She blinked a few times before nodding slowly. “Yeah, sure.”
He walked the armful of empty glasses to the small kitchen as he heard the front door open. He liked Darcy and Quinn’s apartment. It was a hell of a lot cleaner than his. He could actually see the countertops. The tile floor was clean, there were little yellow towels hanging on the oven door, and a vase full of fresh flowers sat on the kitchen windowsill.
He rinsed out the glasses and loaded them into the tiny dishwasher. He wasn’t particularly crazy about sleeping on the couch. Stretching out his long legs wasn’t an option since they’d hang over the side for sure. But when Ewan had told him yesterday that he was planning to come here for the night, Sean had decided to tag along. He needed to talk to Darcy, and he didn’t want to have such an important conversation over the phone.
Sean returned to the dining room just as Darcy finished locking the front door behind Jessi and Mallory.
“Looks like it’s just you and me,” he said to her as she came back toward the table.
She eyed him warily. “Looks like.”
“We haven’t hung out in a long time. I think the last time I saw you was at Rory and Erin’s wedding.”
Their mutual friends, Rory Hughes and Erin Brauer, had finally tied the knot after being together since infancy. Darcy and Quinn had been in the wedding. Sean had shown up with a new date. She’d looked gorgeous, but as far as conversation went, it really hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Yeah, things change.” Darcy turned toward the living room. “People grow apart, I guess.”
Sean followed her. “I wouldn’t say we’re growing apart. Would you?”
She looked at him as she sunk down in an armchair, her raven-black hair swinging into her face. She tucked both sides behind her ears. It had grown a couple inches since he’d seen her last. It was long enough to touch her shoulders, and it looked nice on her. In fact, she looked different altogether.
Studying her, he couldn’t figure out what had changed. It wasn’t just the hair. She had cheekbones when he’d never noticed them before, and her eyebrows arched neatly away from her eyes.
The delicate angles of her face were more pronounced. Her complexion was still white and clear like a china doll, and she still had the same dreamy, almost bored look like she was constantly waiting for someone to amuse her.
Yet she didn’t look like the same Darcy, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
“We hardly see each other. But that’s to be expected since you live in Boston, and I live in Providence.”
The thought unsettled him. Yeah, he was busy with work and she was busy with hers. He hated to think they weren’t close anymore.
“I actually came down here to talk to you,” he said, sitting down on the couch, where he’d be sleeping later.
She’d been picking at a thread on the hem of her jeans, and now her chin came up. Her mouth was slack, and she blinked rapidly. Did she have something in her eye?
“How are things with your design firm?” he asked her.
Darcy had a degree in interior design. After graduating last semester, she’d gone into business for herself, setting up shop in Providence.
She had always been artistic. In high school, she’d done a lot of work with set design for the theater department. She had a knack for organization, and no matter when he saw her, she always looked stylish. Just looking around her living room, he could tell she was good at what she did.
The floors were a dark hardwood, and the couch and armchair were a charcoal gray. A huge black ottoman occupied the space between the couch and the wall-mounted TV, which was a decent size for a girl’s apartment. A shaggy teal rug covered nearly the entire living room floor, and the big window overlooking the street was lined with black-and-white-patterned curtains. Quinn and Darcy had candles and lamps and other girly shit scattered around.
She sighed, pulling him out of his visual tour of the room.
“Things are slow,” she said. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’ve only had two clients so far, and they were tiny jobs.”
“So your schedule is open?”
“Wide open,” she said, exaggerating the wide part.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that ’cause I need your help.” She tilted her head at him inquisitively. “I got a call last week from this big hotelier from London. He’s got a chain of hotels in most major cities in Europe and some in the States. He bought an entire block in Boston right on the harbor and plans to build a hotel there.”
She squished her eyebrows together. “How can I help?”
“Well, that’s the thing. He doesn’t want this hotel to be like his other cookie-cutter places. He wants to open a boutique hotel. He says it’s his wife’s idea.”
Her eyes widened. “And he wants you to build it for him?”
“I wish,” Sean said with a sigh. “He wants me bid on the job. We’ll be going up against other contractors. We do it all the time, but this is huge. If we get this job, it would likely more than double our annual profits, not to mention look awesome in our portfolio.”
She nodded. “Yeah, that would be huge.”
“The thing is, he wants each bidder to include the whole package. He doesn’t want to piece together an
y vendors himself. He wants the teams to be preassembled and ready to build as soon as possible. That means contractor, architect, interior design, everything. My firm can provide most of the services it would take to build the hotel from the ground up. But interior design is something we don’t have in-house. That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.”
Darcy’s mouth dropped open. Excitement danced in her eyes as she stared at him.
“You want me to work for you?”
“You’d work with me. We would hire you as an outside subcontractor.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth.
“Nope. The job is yours if you want it.”
And he hoped she did want it. Not just because he thought she was the best person for the job but because it would give them more time to spend together. He didn’t like the idea of them growing apart.
She covered her mouth with her fingertips but failed to hide her delight. The sparkle in her deep blue eyes told him he’d just found himself an interior designer.
Her hand fell away, and she smiled at him. Very rarely did Darcy give such beautiful smiles, but she sat in front of him, her white perfect teeth biting into her lower lip.
“I’ll take it. When do we start?”
“Can you be in Boston next Thursday?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
Sean smiled at her, leaning back into the corner of the couch, crossing an ankle over his opposing knee. “I forgot to tell you about the catch,” he said, looking at her in all seriousness.
Her smile disappeared. “What catch?”
“You only get the job if you tell me who deflowered you.”
She picked up the nearest pillow and hit him hard on the shoulder before throwing it at his head. “You’re an ass!”
But she laughed as she said it. She definitely looked different, but that twinkle in her eye let him know that she was still the same Darcy.
Chapter 2
It was a cool September day as Darcy drove her faithful Volkswagen Golf up I-95. She was stopping over in her hometown to spend the rest of the day with her grandmother before continuing up to Boston for a project meeting with Sean’s company.
The closer she got to home, the denser the forests became, closing in to the sides of the highway. Soon, those trees would give way to the outskirts of the tiny village of Ballagh.
As much as she loved her apartment in Providence, Ballagh would always be home. Everything was better here. The air smelled sweeter, the people were friendlier. You didn’t have to be something that you weren’t, and no one asked you to be either. Sure, there was the occasional deadbeat, but every place had those. This tiny town was the center of her universe.
Once in Ballagh, it took her no time at all to reach the house where she had spent most of her formative years. Grandma Nell shared the place with her best friend, Mary McPhee. Both her grandma and Phee were surrogate mothers to her, and Darcy couldn’t pass by Ballagh without at least stopping in for a meal.
Parking her car in the carport next to the house, Darcy scanned the yard. Nothing had changed. It was still as beautiful as ever.
The winding driveway set the house back a ways from the road. With its stark white exterior, trimmed with cobalt blue and a slate-gray roof, the house glowed in contrast to the green landscape.
In all the years that she’d lived here, it had always looked the same. Year after year, her grandma planted the same flowers in the many planters littering the front step.
The dark blue door swung open, and the two elderly women hurried out onto the sidewalk toward her. Though their faces were weathered and they seldom remembered to put their dentures in, their looks were deceiving. They were two of the spryest women Darcy knew. And she loved both of them vehemently.
“Darcy!” her grandmother called, waving her hands frantically in the air as she watched her step on the stone sidewalk.
Grandma Nell was tall for a woman, but with osteoporosis, she wasn’t as tall as she used to be. She kept her long white hair pulled back in a tight bun. In fact, Darcy couldn’t remember a time she’d ever seen it down. With twinkling blue eyes and rounded through the middle, her grandma was the epitome of a cute little old lady.
A cute little old lady with a sharp tongue.
Phee, on the other hand, wasn’t tall at all. In fact, she was probably as round as she was tall, and she only came up to the top of Darcy’s shoulder. And seeing how Darcy herself was only about five feet, five inches, that meant Phee was short. She tried to make up for her lack of height with her hair. She puffed the gray curls on top of her head, and if the fluff got wet, Phee would probably look about three inches shorter.
“Hey, Grandma. Hey, Phee.”
“Beautiful girl. How are you, child?” Phee said, getting to her first and wrapping her short arms around her in a tight squeeze.
“Good, Phee.” Darcy wrapped one arm around Phee and opened the other to her grandma as she joined the group hug. “It’s so good to see you both.”
“You’re just in time for lunch. And by the feel of you,” her grandma said as she dug her fingers into Darcy’s ribs, “we need to fatten you up a bit.”
Darcy smiled down at her grandma. For the past year, Darcy had been trying to lose weight. Not that she was fat, but she always carried a bit more meat on her bones than she liked to.
She’d been able to meet her goal with Quinn’s help. Her best friend was a health nut and did most of the cooking at the apartment. They’d eaten more fresh vegetables in the last several months than she’d had in the entire five years previous. Because of this new healthy diet, and her daily walks, which weren’t always daily, she’d slimmed down.
But she still had curves. In fact, she wasn’t sure she wanted to lose any more weight from where she was at currently. She’d keep some junk in her trunk, thank you very much.
Once getting inside, Darcy inhaled the comforting familiar smell of freshly baked bread. Phee was a masterful baker and made fresh bread nearly every day. Darcy dumped her overnight bag beside the door and walked into the kitchen. She dug around in the cabinets until she found her favorite mug.
“Anyone else for a cup of tea?”
“That’d be lovely, dear,” said her grandma.
“None for me,” Phee replied. “I’ve got to get over to the church. I’m organizing a bake sale.”
“But, Phee, I just got here.” Darcy was a little disappointed that she didn’t have the two women all to herself.
“You think the sun rises and sets on your clock, Darcy Owens?” Phee piped up, walking into the kitchen. She threw an arm around Darcy’s shoulder, pulling her down so she could kiss her temple. “We’ll visit tonight when I get home.”
“All right, Phee.”
The stout old woman waved her good-byes and shuffled out the door. Darcy put the kettle on the stove to heat and pulled out the ingredients to make the tea.
“What’s for lunch? It smells great.”
“Chicken and dumplings,” her grandma called from the table. “It’s getting cold, child. You better come get it while it’s hot.”
No wonder she was never able to lose weight when she lived with her grandma. Chicken and dumplings was one of her favorites. Rich, creamy chicken broth with soft pillow dumplings. It didn’t get much better than that. Grandma Nell had been making it for her as long as she’d been living with her.
Darcy’s mother, who was Grandma Nell’s only daughter, had fallen as far from the tree as she could get. Like, fell off the tree, rolled down a hill onto a cargo ship, and sailed to China, to be more accurate.
From the time Darcy was born until she was ten years old, she’d had no idea that food like chicken and dumplings existed. In fact, if it didn’t come out of a can or a box, she wasn’t familiar with it.
As far as Darcy was concerned, her life had started when she’d gotten on that bus at ten years old and landed in Ballagh. She wouldn’t trade the years she’d spent with her grandma
for anything in the world.
“So, little dove,” her grandma said, pulling her out of her thoughts. “You mentioned you’re driving to Boston tomorrow?”
Darcy nodded as she turned off the whistling kettle. She smiled at her grandmother’s pet name for her. She’d called her that ever since she could remember.
“Yeah, I’m working with Sean on a project.”
“Sean, you say?”
As she poured the tea and sat back down at the table, Darcy briefly told Grandma Nell about Sean’s job offer and why she needed to be in Boston the following night.
She was staying at a hotel right next to the Harborwalk in the Waterfront.
She’d been to the city before but usually for university parties. This trip was supposed to be more about business than pleasure. But throw Sean McKenna into any situation, and it automatically became pleasure to Darcy.
“And Sean is meeting ya tomorrow, is it?”
“So he says.”
Grandma Nell made a noise in the back of her throat, causing Darcy to look up from the steaming bowl of goodness in front of her.
“What?”
“That boy doesn’t know up from down.”
“Grandma, I thought you liked Sean,” Darcy said, surprised by the older woman’s negative opinion.
“I do, but he’s clueless. You’ve been in love with him for donkey’s years. If he can’t see the beauty that ya are, then he’s not the brightest bulb in the box if you ask me.”
Darcy laughed as Grandma Nell continued.
“Sure, he’s a fine bit of stuff, but he’s clearly blind.”
“You won’t find any argument from me,” Darcy agreed.
In all the years that Sean and Darcy had known each other, he’d never once questioned her friendship. Never once noticed her staring at him longingly. Or if he did, he didn’t know why she was looking at him or care enough to ask.
She remembered the first time she’d laid eyes on Sean. It had been her first day of school after arriving in Ballagh. As she’d reluctantly walked toward the brick school building, nerves getting the better of her with each step she took, she’d noticed a kid up ahead getting picked on by a few other kids. The bullies had all been larger than the small boy and had no trouble pushing him around like a pinball between them.
Not In My Wildest Dreams (McKenna Series Book 2) Page 2