Not In My Wildest Dreams (McKenna Series Book 2)

by Jamie Hollins

  But the longer she sat in her living room and worked on the designs, the surer she felt that they were winners… the surer she felt that she was on to something great.

  And the more she felt like proving to Sean that he wouldn’t know a great interior design idea if it bit him in the dick.

  As Adele wound down her song, Darcy heard a shrill ring, and she quickly pulled her earbuds out. It was the house phone.

  Darcy smirked. Even though Sean had hurt her feelings, she knew that he didn’t mean it personally. At least that was what she’d come up with on her drive back to Providence. He might be fooling everyone else with his calm, confident façade, but she could see this deal was messing with his head. Sean had insecurities like everyone else.

  His stemmed from failure. He was scared shitless of it.

  Darcy could guess where his fear of failure had started. She thought it might have something to do with his parents and their blinding affection for Sean’s older sister, Megan. She wasn’t just perfect on paper. She was as close to perfect as any human being could be.

  Everyone knew it. But Sean felt it. He’d long since given up at winning his parents’ attention. Yes, he’d had a loving upbringing. But living in his sister’s shadow couldn’t have been easy.

  So Sean stuck to what he was good at. He could make anyone laugh. He was incredibly attractive, and the constant string of women who paraded around him at bars and clubs was proof of that.

  When he’d fallen into his internship at Michael’s contracting company, Sean had found himself a niche where he excelled professionally. After which Michael’s approval was and continued to be paramount.

  That was why this project was such a big deal. Sean was sticking his neck out. He could succeed, or he could fail. It was why Darcy was so touched he’d asked for her help. And it was why it hurt so much when he doubted her professional opinion.

  The house phone stopped ringing, followed by a loud beep. She knew no one used answering machines anymore, but her lease mandated she have a landline in order for her unit’s security system to work. The phone she bought had an answering machine built in. So she used it to screen her house phone calls.

  “Darcy,” Sean’s smooth voice called. “Pick. Up. The. Phone. Woman.” There was a pause. “I didn’t want to tell you this,” he continued. “But I’ve been kidnapped and I need your help. This older woman—extremely good-looking for an older woman, by the way—cornered me at the grocery store. She said she needed my help carrying bags to her car. Being the gentleman I am, I agreed. But when we got to her car, she opened the trunk and bam! Lights out! I woke up chained to her giant bed, and oh, God, Darcy, I think she’s going to have her wicked way with me. Please pick up the phone so you can help me!”

  She couldn’t help but grin. He was a fucking clown.

  She’d talked with him a couple of times since being home. It was usually when Quinn picked up the house phone by accident and forgot to make up an excuse, forcing Darcy to take the call. Although she acted like nothing was wrong, she wasn’t fooling him. So he kept calling.

  “She’s probably gonna give me paper cuts all over my body,” Sean said on the answering machine. “You know how much I hate paper cuts.”

  She leaned back on the couch, listening to his guilty conscience babble on and on about the horrible things the attractive older woman was going to do to him.

  “Anyways, I think I hear her coming down the steps into this dungeon where she’s keeping me. If I don’t make it out of here, I just want you to know that—”

  Darcy’s grin faded away as she strained to hear what he’d say next.

  “I just want you to know that I forgive you for lying to me about Maggie White stealing your virginity. It could have happened to anyone, Darce. Don’t blame yourself for not being able to resist her siren song.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Okay, here comes my captor. Call me, damn it!”

  She heard the phone disconnect. With a deep breath, she popped her earbuds back in and resumed her sketching.

  She’d let him squirm for a few hours, and then she’d call him back.

  One of her favorite Coldplay songs came on just as she was finishing up the outline of the headboard in the Orchid Suite. Like most all of their music, the song drifted through her, helping her release any tension that was there. She hummed along as she drew a potted orchid on the desk in front of the suite’s big floor-to-ceiling window. Soon her hums turned into singing.

  A shadow crossed the piece of sketch paper, causing Darcy’s head to snap up. She shrieked when she saw Quinn standing beside her.

  “Fuck!” she yelled, covering her racing heart with her hand.

  “Sorry, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”

  Darcy pulled her earbuds out. “Holy Jesus, I think I just aged a year. What are you doing home so early?”

  “Class was canceled.”

  Darcy took a deep breath, putting the purple pencil down on the coffee table. No way could she sketch until the crazy trembles left her body.

  “You were singing.”

  Darcy raised her eyes to her roommate.

  “Your voice. It’s…”

  Darcy winced, painful memories swimming to the surface. She never let people hear her sing. Ever.

  “Your voice is beautiful, Darcy.”

  “It’s nothing,” she whispered, fiddling with her iPod.

  So she had a beautiful singing voice. Those who had heard it said it was one of the purest and most beautiful voices they’d ever heard. Some even said it brought them to tears.

  But she didn’t sing anymore. At least not for anyone other than herself.

  She didn’t sing in the shower. She didn’t sing in church when her grandma dragged her there. She didn’t sing in the car to the radio along with her friends.

  Her parents might have given her a love of music. But they’d killed any joy she got from singing. Darcy was perfectly content with never sharing her voice with another living soul for as long as she lived.

  Like she said, painful memories.

  “But—” Quinn started.

  “Please, it’s really not a big deal.”

  Her roommate studied her for a moment. “What’s not a big deal? Tell me about it.”

  “There’s not much to tell.” Darcy was trying to politely say that she didn’t want to talk about it. Quinn being Quinn, thinking she could fix everything, didn’t catch that. Or if she did, she ignored it.

  “Why don’t you tell me what little there is to tell me, then? How come we’ve lived together for the last year and this is the first time I’ve heard you sing? And then when I compliment you on it, you clam up? What’s wrong with singing?”

  “It’s just something I don’t ever talk about. In fact, outside of my parents, the only other person who knows anything about it is my grandmother.”

  She knew it wasn’t really an answer to the question. And more stalling wasn’t going to get her anywhere with Quinn. When Quinn sunk down in the armchair next to her, she figured she might as well bite the bullet and spit it out.

  Darcy sighed loudly. “Okay, so a long time ago, in a land far, far away, my parents were the undefeated champions of the shittiest parents of the universe. We didn’t have much money—no money, in fact. And living in a place like New York City was hell without money. Neither my mother nor father could hold a job down longer than a few days. But one thing they were both fairly good at was playing the guitar. So to make money, they took to the streets and played for tourists in Central Park.

  “When I was old enough to talk, they realized I could sing, and they added me to their act. It turns out, I was the big break they were looking for. Everyone threw money at the little girl standing on her wooden crate singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.” Darcy shook her head, not able to look up from her sketches she was sorting on her lap. “Singing. That’s all I did every night, year after year. It became a job, and if I was lucky, my paycheck might equate to some oatm
eal or some mushy peas.”

  Quinn’s voice was thick with emotion when she asked, “What happened to all the money you were bringing in?”

  Darcy shrugged. “That money went straight into my parents’ bloodstream via alcohol or whatever they could stick into a syringe.” She looked up at her roommate and gave her a small smile. “They were upstanding citizens, you see.”

  Her joke sounded pitiful even to her own ears.

  Quinn scooted to the edge of her chair, putting her warm palm on Darcy’s knee. Darcy could see Quinn was struggling with what to say. She also saw her roommate’s face start to turn red, which made Darcy smile. Quinn wasn’t trying not to cry. She was trying not to explode.

  “They’re not even worth a second thought, Quinn. That was a long time ago.”

  That was what Darcy told herself often when little reminders would pop up. Any thought of her parents was a wasted second she’d never get back.

  Quinn blew out a deep breath. “Okay, I’m better. I’m just going to say I’m sorry for what you had to go through with those two—” Her face started pinching again before she caught herself. “Anyway… I’m glad you told me. Your secret is safe with me, of course. Now tell me about what you’re working on. Those look beautiful,” she said, pointing at the drawings on Darcy’s lap.

  “You know you would completely suck as a politician, right?”

  “When I get worked up, my vocabulary shrinks to cuss words. And they’re not even the really good cuss words either.”

  Darcy laughed. She really loved her roommate.

  “These are the sketches I’m working on for my project with Sean. It’s a boutique hotel in Boston. We’ve got a meeting lined up in two weeks with this bigwig hotel guy.”

  “May I see?” Quinn asked as she reached for the drawings.

  Darcy passed them over before getting up to pour herself a glass of water. When she returned to the living room, Quinn was still leafing through them.

  “They’re amazing, Darcy. Sean was so smart to ask you to join the team.”

  Darcy barked out a laugh. “Sorry. Just never heard Sean and the word smart mentioned in the same sentence before.”

  “Oh, come on. I know he acts totally goofy. Even goofier when he’s around you. But he can’t be that way at his job, right?”

  “You know, surprisingly, he’s quite good at what he does. He organized this entire team, and so far, he seems to be pretty efficient. It’s not the same Sean I grew up with. He’s professional, and when he speaks, people listen.”

  “It’s kinda hot, right? Sometimes when I help out at the pub, I watch Ewan behind the bar. The way he flips those glasses and bottles around. He doesn’t even have to be looking at what he’s doing. He could be carrying on a conversation or, all right, not carrying on a conversation but listening to someone carrying on about something, and in the span of, like, a minute, he’s filled the entire bar’s drink order. It’s hot.” Quinn bit into her lower lip and nodded slowly as her mind carried her off in Ewan La-La Land.

  Darcy chuckled. “I find Sean hot all the time, but yeah, I know what you mean. I can’t help but think if he put half the intensity and skill into fucking as he does into running a business meeting, I might not be able to survive it. It would be a total sexual overload.”

  “Try not to think about that the next time you’re sitting in a business meeting. I dare you.”

  “I’m not taking that dare.”

  Quinn smiled knowingly while handing Darcy back her drawings. “These are great, Darce. Sean’s gonna love them. And so will the client.”

  She already knew that was half-possible. Sean had made it clear he did not love them. She could only hope that Wellington wasn’t as creatively challenged as Sean.

  Darcy was about to tell Quinn just that when she was interrupted by her cell phone.

  Again.

  Irritation bloomed as Darcy searched under her papers before finally grabbing her phone and accepting the call without even looking at the caller ID. “Good God, why do you keep calling?”

  There was a pause before an unfamiliar male voice said, “Um, is Darcy there?”

  Shit. It wasn’t Sean.

  “Speaking.”

  “Ah, hi, Darcy. It’s Rhys.”

  “Oh, fuck, I’m sorry. I’ve been getting constant phone calls from… Well, my phone’s been ringing off the hook. I should have looked at the caller ID. How are you, Rhys?”

  His deep laugh rolled into her ear. “Fine, fine. Am I catching you in the middle of something?”

  Darcy looked up at Quinn and shrugged her shoulders. “No, just working on my designs. What’s up?”

  “I was calling to say that I’ll be in Providence on Friday for a business thing. I thought I’d see if you had plans and whether you’d like to have dinner with me?”

  This was the second time Rhys had asked her out. She sighed, a gentle rejection on the tip of her tongue just like it always was when she got asked out on a date. But before she opened her mouth, she stopped.

  What the hell was she waiting for? It wasn’t like Sean was ever gonna wake up and smell the fucking roses.

  Rhys was a good-looking guy. He had a nice sense of humor. She wasn’t sure if they had a lot in common, but they could at least talk about their respective professions for hours.

  She glanced toward the kitchen and saw the light on their home answering machine with Sean’s voice recorded on it. It was flashing red like a giant traffic light. But Darcy was tired of heeding those red traffic signals because of her hope that Sean would all of a sudden come around and think of her as something more than just a friend.

  “Friday night?” Darcy said into the receiver. “Yeah, Friday night sounds good. I’d love to have dinner with you.”

  ###

  Sean heard the crunch of gravel as he pulled his SUV into his parents’ driveway in Ballagh. Home, sweet home. Or whatever.

  He’d been summoned home for a family dinner in honor of Her Royal Highness, the exemplary Megan Dempsey, Queen of Chicago and every other city between here and there.

  Otherwise known as his older sister.

  Megan, who very seldom visited their parents since moving to Chicago with her husband, was the patron saint of Ballagh. The problem with Megan wasn’t actually Megan’s fault. The blame lay with everyone who’d ever met her.

  She was beautiful, polite, extremely intelligent, and an all-around good person. She followed the rules and never complained. She was pretty much perfect.

  It wasn’t the fact that she was perfect that bothered Sean. It was the fact that everyone else wouldn’t shut up about it.

  His parents doted on her like she was the fucking Queen of England. And it’d been that way for as long as he could remember. When she’d earned an A on a test, their mother would bake her a cake. When she’d nabbed the lead in the school play, her parents called all of their family and friends to spread the word that they expected everyone in attendance.

  When Megan was accepted into every university she'd applied to, she’d gotten her favorite meals for a week. The day she’d found out she got a full scholarship to Northwestern, their dad declared an open bar at the pub for the evening.

  And while all of this was going on, Sean had just floated along in her wake.

  Megan, who was two years older than he was, had never once rubbed it in that she was brilliant or that she was good at everything she tried. But how could Sean not resent the fact that everyone had compared the two of them his entire life?

  And let’s be honest. There was no comparison.

  Teachers had quickly learned that fact when Sean had to struggle his way through grade school. The locals had learned quickly which sibling was better behaved. Everyone had seemed to figure out that Sean and Megan were on different ends of the perfection spectrum. The first to figure that out were his parents.

  Sean recalled hearing numerous times from his mom and dad how much easier things had been the first time around with Megan. Learn
ing to crawl, walk, talk. Potty training and disciplining. You name it, Megan had done it faster and better than Sean. With his apparent inadequacies, Sean had frustrated his parents to no end.

  He knew that his parents loved him without question. But did they wish he was more like his sister? Undoubtedly.

  As Sean made his way to the front door of his childhood home, it looked like he was the last one there for dinner, which was no great surprise. It would be a bigger surprise if they actually waited on him to start eating.

  He was greeted with the familiar smells and sounds of his parents’ house as he opened the front door. Dishes clanged and animated voices floated from the kitchen into the foyer.

  He shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the wooden coatrack before bending to untie his shoes. The sound of footsteps had him looking up just in time to see his sister peek her head around the corner.

  She smiled sweetly at him. Even as annoyingly wonderful as his sister was, it was hard not to love her.

  “I thought I heard someone come in.” She stopped in front of him and gave him the once-over, taking in his jeans and button-down pale yellow shirt. “You look well, Sean.”

  “You look lovely as always, Meggie,” he replied, pulling her in for a tight hug.

  “Mom’s ready to shoot through the roof if we don’t all sit down and eat. Quinn kept insisting we should wait for you. She’s feisty, that Quinn. I like her.”

  Sean grinned. “Yeah, Ewan’s found a keeper.”

  When Megan stepped back, Sean got a better look at her. Ever the classic beauty, she was tall and slender with long, flowing blond hair and pale blue eyes. Dressed in her usual domestic uniform, she wore black pants, a pink top and matching cardigan, and a strand of pearls around her neck. A serene smile was permanently fixed on her face. She never let it slip.

  She was the picture of modern perfection.

  “Megan, dear, where did you run off to?” Their mother, wearing oven mitts on each hand, came breezing into the foyer in her apron. “Sean, you’re finally here! You really should have phoned to let us know you were running late,” she scolded him, but with a grin on her face.