by Jane Graves
“What are you doing?” he asked, breathing hard.
She froze. “What do you mean?”
“What’s with all the hollering?”
What did he think was with it? “I’m . . . uh . . . excited?”
“Sweetheart, you’re about as excited as a nun in church.”
Oh, God. He knew. How did he know? Drop back. Regroup. Get control again. She gave him a sexy smile. “Baby, you have no idea how excited I am.”
“Knock it off. Why are you faking it?”
Her smile vanished. “I’m not faking it!”
“Come on, Darcy. I know the phony stuff when I hear it.”
“No. This is good. It really is. Will you just get on with it?”
Instead, he fell to one side and sat up. Judging from his still-raging erection, stopping clearly hadn’t been an easy thing for him to do. And yet he had. What was wrong with this man?
“What are you doing?” Darcy said. “Men don’t just stop in the middle of things!”
“This one does,” John said, “when he’s being lied to. Have you always faked it?”
Darcy opened her mouth to deny it one more time, but then he was staring down at her with that look on his face she was growing so accustomed to—the one that said he wasn’t buying even a tiny white lie or a remote stretching of the truth.
She sat up and faced him, pulling the covers up to her chest and swiping her hair away from her face. “All right, John. You want the truth? Here’s the truth. Sometimes it’s just easier to give a man what he wants and get it over with.”
“Really? Exactly what do you think a man wants?”
“To get off as fast as he can, as often as he can, with a minimum of hassle.”
“Where most men are concerned, you’re probably right.”
“And a man also wants to believe that just the presence of his mighty rod in the vicinity of the bedroom is enough to bring a woman to orgasmic ecstasy.”
“Did Warren subscribe to that particular fantasy?”
“Warren was the poster boy for that particular fantasy.”
“So you decided to keep on faking it as long as he was signing the checks?”
Darcy wanted to get angry at that, but his words held so much truth that she just couldn’t bring herself to.
“And if you’re all wrapped up in the moment yourself,” John said, “it’s hard to keep your hands on the reins, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Newsflash, Darcy. You’re a little controlling.”
She drew back. “Well, if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.”
“That’s a fair observation. Here’s another one. I think under different circumstances than the ones you’ve lived with in the past, you might actually like sex.”
“It’s not that I don’t like it,” she said. “It’s just that . . .”
“What?”
“There are only certain ways that I . . . you know. And it’s not all that common, so . . .”
John turned on the lamp and opened her nightstand drawer. Shoving some things aside, he pulled out a certain electronic device. “Is this one of those ways?”
“Put that back!”
“Hmm. Not exactly warm and fuzzy, is it?”
Darcy grabbed it from his hand, wondering how in the hell he knew the things he did. Men weren’t supposed to understand women, which really gave women an edge. With John, she had no edge at all.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “up to now I haven’t met a man who could top your average battery-powered device.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, maybe if you stopped faking it and told a man the truth, you’d be tossing that thing in the trash.”
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Saying nothing, he grabbed his jeans and put them on, then his socks, and picked up his shoes.
“John?”
He turned and pointed at her. “When you’re ready to lay off the phony stuff and get real, let me know.”
He went into the hall, yanked on his shirt, and a few minutes later, she heard her front door open and close. Then . . . silence.
Darcy sat back against the headboard, shocked almost to tears. What the hell had just happened here?
She didn’t understand it. The better she faked it, the happier Warren had seemed to be. She had no doubt he told all his golf buddies about just how good he was at satisfying his wife—his young, beautiful wife who was hot for him even after years of marriage.
What a joke.
It had always been a performance. A means to an end. No matter how she felt, the show always went on. But sometimes she’d lie awake afterward and think, Is this all there is? Then she’d wake up the next morning to her beautiful home and her cute little sports car and her platinum AmEx, and she’d forget.
Until the next time.
She’d bet half the men out there didn’t care if they satisfied a woman, and the other half would be happy never knowing whether they had or not. But not John. He was in category number three, whatever the hell that was. When was he going to start behaving like other men and stop driving her crazy?
Then she remembered the front door. She got up to lock the deadbolt, turning it until she heard a reassuring little click. When she turned back around, she saw the gift basket on the bar between the kitchen and living room.
Chocolate. I need chocolate.
She tore open the Godiva box, grabbed a chocolate ganache, and took a bite. She sat down on the sofa, her eyes closed, chewing slowly, savoring every morsel. One bite, and she remembered. A little piece of heaven Warren had taken away from her.
A little piece of heaven Jeremy Bridges had replaced.
You’re not cut out to struggle.
As she looked around this barren apartment, it scared her to think this was her life until she could find a way to make more money, win the lottery, or the heavens opened up and dropped thousands of dollars right into her lap. What scared her more was the way she was starting to feel about John, a man who wasn’t much higher on the economic scale than she was, which meant that with him, security would never be a given. A deadbolt couldn’t conquer everything that was wrong with her life right now.
But the way it had made her feel, along with so many other things tonight . . .
As she played every moment of this evening over in her mind, she realized she’d never been herself in front of a man before. She wasn’t even sure she knew who the person was underneath all the subterfuge. Whoever she really was, though, John seemed to like her the most—the woman with the forty-year-old body who wore cheap clothes, drove a rattletrap, lived in a slum, and was terrified of bugs. At this rate, she might never figure him out.
Don’t leave me in the dark. Tell me what you want.
But instead of telling him what he wanted to know, she’d told him what she thought he wanted to hear. Then she’d given him an earful of Meg Ryan. How dumb had that made her look?
At the time, it had irritated her beyond measure to have him call her on it. But now as she thought about it, she couldn’t help but wonder what might happen if she brought John out of the dark and into the light. What kind of experience would he have in store for her then?
“It’s perfect!” Amy said as she circled the chipped, dusty end table sitting in the middle of John’s living room. “It’s just the right size. Once it’s refinished, it’ll look great with my décor.”
Décor? Amy didn’t have décor. She had a houseful of orphaned furniture nobody else on the planet would touch. As John looked down at the ugly piece of furniture he’d almost hauled to the dump this morning, he couldn’t imagine any amount of refinishing that would make it presentable.
“Did you find anything else when you were cleaning out the attic?” Amy asked.
“Yeah. A dead squirrel.”
“No, thanks. Dead animals are so last year.”
“Oh,” she said. “Meant to ask you. What was Darcy’s new apartment like?”
John froze. “How would I know?”
“She moved in yesterday, right? I thought maybe you went by to see her.”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. You were harping about her living in a hellhole. I thought maybe you’d go by to check it out.”
“Where Darcy lives is no business of mine.”
“Come on, John. You think everybody’s business is your business.”
“Not hers.”
Amy looked at him carefully. “Hmm. I thought things were okay between you two. I mean, there was the tow truck incident, but you seemed to have forgiven her for that.” She grinned. “That took guts, didn’t it?”
“She broke the law.”
“Still took guts.”
“If it’s not one thing with her, it’s another.”
“Did something else happen?”
“None of your business.”
“So my business is your business, but not the other way around?”
“Darcy is exactly what I thought she was. Phony through and through.”
“You want to be more specific?”
“Nope.”
“John, at the risk of beating a dead horse—”
“I don’t want to hear anything that starts out like that.”
“You’d be a lot happier with a woman in your life.”
“Amy, go home.”
She sighed. “Fine. Die alone. See if I care.”
“Actually, I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. Dogs are always glad to see you. They don’t have smart mouths. They don’t try to manipulate you. And best of all, they don’t let you pet them and then act as if they liked it when they really didn’t.”
Amy screwed up her face. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Never mind.”
“Well,” Amy said, looking over his shoulder, “speak of the devil.”
John turned around to see a car coming down the street, and by the clatter of the engine, there was no mistaking whose car it was. What was Darcy doing here?
She pulled to the curb and killed the engine, then scooted to the passenger door and got out. Pushing her sunglasses to the top of her head, she walked up to them, giving Amy a smile but avoiding looking at him. She wore that long, funny-looking skirt from Wal-Mart with all the permanent wrinkles in it that shouldn’t have looked good on anyone, but on her somehow it did. Or maybe he was just remembering what was underneath the skirt.
Stop thinking about that. It’ll only get you in trouble.
“Darcy?” John said. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh. Well . . . I just thought I’d return your toolbox. You left it at my apartment last night.”
John winced. Amy turned to him with a sly smile. “So you went to Darcy’s apartment last night, huh?”
“Amy, don’t you need to be going?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’m going. And John?”
“What?”
“That dog you’re thinking about getting? Not such a good idea. You know who man’s best friend really is.” She turned to Darcy. “See you at work tomorrow.”
“Good-bye,” Darcy said, then turned to John. “You’re getting a dog?”
“No, I’m not getting a dog,” he snapped. “Open your trunk.”
As Amy drove away, Darcy unlocked the trunk and John got the toolbox out. He headed for his house. Darcy slammed the trunk closed and hurried after him. He climbed the steps to his porch, then turned around and glared at her. “What are you doing?”
“I thought we could talk for a minute.”
“Do we really have anything to say to each other?”
“John, if I want to talk to you, you know I’ll find a way. And who knows what that might involve?”
Now that was a threat he took seriously.
With a sigh of resignation, he finally just turned and walked inside, and she followed. He took the toolbox to his utility room, then went back to the kitchen to wash his dusty hands.
“Nice house,” Darcy said.
“Darcy, on your scale of nice, this house is a negative number.”
“Not these days, it isn’t.”
Good point. He rinsed his hands and reached for a dishtowel. “What do you want?”
“I told you. I just wanted to . . . you know. Talk.”
“I have things to do.”
“Like what?”
“I have to clean out my gutters.”
“Gee, that sounds like fun.”
“It’s gotta be done.”
“Actually, I was hoping we could do something . . . together.”
There was no mistaking her meaning, and his mind went immediately to the ninety-five percent of last night that had gone perfectly rather than the five percent that hadn’t.
No. Don’t you ever forget that five percent.
He gave her a stern look. “There’s no reason to go any further with this, Darcy. It was wrong from the beginning. You know I hate high-maintenance women.”
She raised her chin. “Well, I don’t think much of blue-collar men.”
“All that mirror gazing and clothes shopping.”
“All that beer drinking and sports watching.”
“Nobody gets between me and the Cowboys on Sunday afternoons.”
“And nobody gets between me and Neiman’s on sale days.” She sighed. “Okay, so now it’s more like Wal-Mart and their Everyday Low Prices, but it won’t be that way forever.”
“Why is that so important to you?”
“What? To have nice things? To live in a place where I can turn on a light and not hear the patter of little roach feet?”
“You could have stayed with your parents.”
“Once you meet them, you’ll change that tune.”
“I doubt I’ll ever be meeting them. Like I said, we have no business being together. Now, it’s time for me to get to those gutters.” He brushed past her and walked out of the kitchen.
“John. Wait.”
He turned back. “What?”
She let out a breath. “You told me to let you know.”
He paused. “Know what?”
“When I was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
Her eyes flitted around nervously before they finally settled on his again, and she spoke so quietly he could barely hear her. “To get real.”
“Get real?” he said warily. “Don’t you mean you’re ready to see if you can fake it a little better?”
“Damn it, John, will you cut me some slack? This is hard enough for me to talk about.”
Hard for her to talk about, and even harder for him to take. It didn’t do much for a man’s ego when a woman faked it. He knew why she’d done it, why she’d always done it, but still it irritated him. Hell, there wasn’t much about this woman that didn’t irritate him. But he didn’t like how last night had ended, and he decided he wasn’t going to leave it at that.
“Okay, Darcy. We can give it another shot.”
She nodded.
“But before things go any further between us, there are a few issues we need to address.”
“Uh . . . like what?”
“Come with me.”
Chapter 16
As John turned and headed down the hall, Darcy just stood there for several seconds, her heart racing, wondering what he was up to.
There was only one way to find out.
She followed him down the hall, her heart skipping a little when he went straight to his bedroom. His furniture was old, cheap, and out of style, and the room was pretty much devoid of anything decorative. An ugly blue chenille bedspread was draped crookedly over a king-sized bed. John sat down on the bed, leaned against the headboard, folded his arms, and stared at her hungrily.
“
Take off your clothes.”
Darcy recoiled. “What did you say?”
“Do as I tell you.”
Suddenly her heart was beating ninety to nothing. John’s ever-present displays of authority always irritated her, and she wondered if she shouldn’t just call a halt to this before it got started. When it came right down to it, he still scared her a little. How was she ever supposed to feel comfortable around him when he seemed to be able to read her mind, but she was having such a hard time reading his?
But even though she didn’t know what he was up to, just the memory of being with him last night was stronger than any resentment she felt. Whatever his game was, she had to play it if she expected to get anywhere. But all this daylight just wasn’t going to cut it. She walked over to the drapes and started to close them.
“No,” John said. “Leave them open.”
She whipped around. “Why?”
“Because this time I want to get a good look at that body you think is so age-ravaged.”
Darcy felt a little shiver of apprehension. It had been bad enough in the dark. Now he was going to see her in broad daylight? “Someone will see in.”
“The window looks out on the backyard. I have a six-foot wood fence. We might shock a few squirrels, but that’s it. Now, off with it.”
“I will if you will.”
“Nope. You will and I won’t.”
Okay. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already seen her naked. And if she got that way, surely he wouldn’t be far behind.
She kicked off her shoes, then pulled her knit shirt over her head and tossed it on the bed. The skirt came next. When it hit the floor, she kicked it aside. Down to her bra and panties, she circled the bed to go to him.
“All the way,” John said.
She closed her eyes, gritting her teeth.
“I’m waiting.”
With a sigh of disgust, she took off her bra and stepped out of her panties, refusing to act embarrassed, but so much light was streaming through that window that every bump, bulge, mole, scar, and wrinkle had to be showing up like the topography of the moon through a high-powered telescope. He stared at her with a gaze so hot that there was no mistaking what was on his mind. So why wasn’t he doing something?