Overcome

by Melanie Rachel

  “Uh,” she said, clearing her throat and tasting sour morning breath. She held her hand up to her mouth, trying not to aim it at him. “Good morning?” She sat up and blinked hard to clear her vision, lifting a fist to rub her eyes.

  Will was leaning back on one elbow while something dangled from his other hand.

  “I tried to kiss you awake,” he informed her, his blue eyes sparkling with mirth and looking as though he might burst into laughter at any moment, “but it was the lox that finally worked.” She stared at him blankly and he shook his head dolefully. “I guess I know where I fall on the Prince Charming scale.” His expression turned thoughtful, “Or, I guess he wasn’t the one who kissed a girl awake. Did the prince in Sleeping Beauty have a name?”

  Elizabeth sniffed again, still not fully awake. It occurred to her that the orangish thing Will was holding was, indeed, a slice of lox. Her stomach rumbled, and Will bent over with laughter. Elizabeth sighed, neatly plucked the salmon from his hand before it hit the sheets and ate it in two bites. She shrugged. “No sense letting it go to waste,” she told him calmly. His laughter was contagious, but instead of joining him, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. I really want to kiss him, but not with lox and morning mouth . . . After a few moments, Will entered and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing her ear. She made a grunting sound. His eyes were apologetic.

  “Sorry, love,” he whispered in her ear. “It just feels so good to tease you.”

  “You realize,” she told him sarcastically but mildly, bending forward to spit in the sink, “that teasing is my job.”

  “You’re a good teacher,” he murmured, swaying a little as though there was music playing. He kissed the back of her head. “And I’m a good student.”

  She rinsed her mouth and set the toothbrush back beside the sink before turning to toss her arms around his neck. “You’re a good teacher too,” she told him, one eyebrow arched seductively. “How about another lesson?”

  His face brightened and his hands moved to her hips. Suddenly she found herself perched on the granite counter. “I meant dancing, Will,” she taunted him, but then felt the chill of the granite through her pajamas. She squirmed, trying to jump down, and exclaimed with a laugh, “It’s cold!”

  Will’s hands held her still and his eyes bored into hers. As Elizabeth glanced up to meet her gaze, she stopped moving and fell silent, her hands resting on his forearms. “I’ll keep you warm,” he said in a low, hoarse voice.

  Jane smiled, relieved, as she checked her texts. She leaned back against the sofa cushions, nudging Richard’s shoulder and showing him the screen. He kissed her temple and held his own phone out for her to read Will’s message.

  “They’re happy,” Jane said quietly.

  “They are,” Richard confirmed with the crooked grin that made her stomach flip. “I’ll give them a few days before breaking up the party.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Richard Fitzwilliam,” she said firmly, “you will leave them alone until they’re home and I’ve had eyes on my sister.”

  The expression on his face was impish. “I will?”

  She took his chin in one hand and glared at him. “You will.”

  He nodded once, soberly considering her words, and leaned in close. “And what do I get for such a sacrifice, Jane?” The back of one hand brushed her cheek lightly.

  She released his chin as the Gardiner boys raced in, shouting at one another and running furious laps around the couch. Todd finally reversed direction, tackling his younger brother over possession of what looked like a tablet. Jane tilted her cheek against Richard’s hand, watching from the corner of her eye as her uncle took three long steps into the room, grabbed each boy by the back of his shirt, and hustled them off without a word. Jason’s frustrated howl, “See what you did!” was swallowed up as a door closed somewhere.

  Jane gazed up at Richard innocently, trying to convey her longing. She watched his smug smile gradually disappear. A moment later, she was still watching his face and heard his breathing hitch. At the first gulp, she said sweetly, “You get to be my boyfriend.”

  “I’m hardly a boy,” he informed her with a throaty growl.

  “Should I introduce you to my uncle as the man I sleep with?” she asked, her eyes still locked on his face. She dropped her gaze to his lips, and he swallowed. Jane smiled serenely. Who does he think he’s fooling?

  “If being my boyfriend is not enough,” she replied calmly, standing up, “then I think we’re done here. Have a safe drive home, Richard.” She stooped to pick up the abandoned tablet and place it on the coffee table before she swept out of the room like a debutante.

  “You aren’t angry,” Jane heard him call as she entered the hallway. She did not respond. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs when she heard again, louder this time, “You aren’t angry!”

  “You’re talking to yourself,” said a voice from the doorway. Mary Bennet strolled in, a thick business law textbook with well-thumbed pages tucked under one arm. She flopped down on the other end of the sofa, tucked a runaway strand of hair behind her ear, and began to read.

  Richard crossed his hands behind his head. Should I get up and go after Jane? He wondered. Or would that put her in charge?

  Mary gave him a tiny smile and shook her head without turning to look at him.

  “What?” he asked inquisitively.

  “Are you trying to outlast Jane?” Mary asked. She was apparently tickled by the idea.

  “I’m just sitting here . . .” Richard protested weakly.

  “Trying to outlast Jane,” she confirmed with a nod and turned back to her book.

  Richard watched her. Of all the Bennet girls, he knew the least about Mary. The younger two were often at the house when he visited, and although Jane’s time away from work was so limited, he made it a point to spend those few hours with her. Mary was often on campus, taking a night class, writing essays, studying for exams, meeting with the pre-law society, working at the library, or any of the other million things she had going on. Other than noting to Jane that her middle sister would likely do very well in law school if she held to these habits, he didn’t know much about her.

  Mary Bennet’s coloring was more like Elizabeth’s, but his analytical eye didn’t pick up many other similarities to her sisters. Her eyes were brown, not the deep blue of Jane, the lighter blue of Kit and Lydia, or Elizabeth’s green. Her nose was a bit wide for her face, her cheekbones not quite as high as her elder sisters, her eyebrows just a touch thicker. She was still a pretty girl, but the thought struck him that she might not have felt pretty growing up if she’d compared herself to the other Bennet girls. As he was neither as important to his father nor as handsome as Oscar, Richard felt a sudden sense of kinship with the middle Bennet sister.

  “You don’t think I can outlast her?” he asked, mostly to have something to say.

  Mary glanced up. With a small sigh, she closed her book. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “And why is that?” he inquired, crossing his legs and giving her his full attention. Mary blushed a little under his observation. She’s shy, he thought, surprised. A shy Bennet girl.“Because,” Mary told him sympathetically, folding her hands and resting them on top of the book’s cover, “unlike Lizzy, Jane will let you win every argument as long as it isn’t really important to her.” She eyed her book, obviously wishing to return to her studies. “But there are some things that are very important to her, and on those, she will never, ever give in.”

  Richard rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Like protecting Elizabeth?” He suddenly had a flash of memory, Elizabeth’s expression morphing from laughter to solemn appraisal, a nod to agree that she’d make the first move, disappearing as she dropped to the floor beneath their booth. He blinked and cleared his throat.

  Mary hadn’t noticed. She nodded. “Like protecting Elizabeth or any of us,” she told him simply, then op
ened the book and flipped through the pages, searching for her place. “It’s a family thing.”

  Richard pushed himself up from the couch. “Thanks, Mary,” he said, perhaps a bit too brightly, and strode off to find Jane and apologize.

  “So, do you want to watch the ball drop?” Will asked, the remote control poised to turn on the New Year’s Eve celebration in New York. He’d never ushered in the New Year away from the city, but even so, he made the offer out of habit rather than sentimentality. He was sorry to miss celebrating with Georgiana, but they’d exchanged texts and she’d let him know that after a few days at home, she had been invited to ring in the holiday with a friend from high school. They’d just planned dinner with the friend’s parents with a sleepover afterward. Like the Darcys, they didn’t like to venture out among the revelers.

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Not particularly.” She held up the bottle of champagne he’d ordered earlier. “Chinese food, hot tea, and champagne. I think we’re set.” She pursed her lips, “I mean, unless you want to. I don’t mind.”

  Will shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Movie?”

  She smiled widely. “Sure. What’ll it be?”

  He punched the keys of the remote with his thumb. “Um, Sunset Boulevard?” He looked over to see her response. “I haven’t seen that one.”

  She frowned. “It’s kind of dark. What else is there?”

  Will scrolled through the listings. “Ocean’s 11?”

  Elizabeth glanced up, interested. “Which one?”

  Will grinned. “Please,” he teased her. “The original, of course.”

  She reached for the remote. “From 1960?” she asked quickly, “With the Rat Pack?”

  “Yes, Elizabeth,” he laughed at her, pulling his arm away to retain control of the remote, “that’s what I meant by ‘the original.’”

  She frowned at being denied the remote, but exclaimed, “Yes, please!”

  He shook his head while he set the film up to play. He set the remote down on his side of the bed and walked over to the table where the food was set up.

  “Hey,” he asked, suddenly recalling something. “Who’s Dutch?”

  She blinked at him. “What?”

  He shrugged. “Just before you woke up you said, ‘Don’t call me Dutch.’ Are you Dutch?”

  “I was, yes,” she told him with a sigh.

  “That could mean so many things . . .” he said carefully. “Is there a story to it?”

  She laughed softly. “Yes, a folktale.”

  His eyebrows pressed together for a minute. “You mean ‘The Little Dutch Boy’? Where he sticks his finger in a dyke and saves the town from flooding?”

  She nodded. “According to Abby, that’s my job. We all gather intel—but I’m generally the one who plugs the hole while everyone else gets help.”

  Will unscrambled her statement. He was getting pretty good at interpreting Elizabeth-speak. “Meaning you’re the one who saves the day?”

  She scowled. “It’s just a stupid nickname, Will.”

  And an awful lot of pressure, he thought. He dropped the subject and concentrated on the food. After he made himself a plate, he carried it over to the bed, where Elizabeth had spread out two towels like blankets at a picnic. She was shoveling rice into her mouth with chopsticks.

  “You’re very good with those,” he remarked. As quickly as she was eating, she hadn’t dropped a single grain.

  She swallowed. “Thank you, Mr. Remote Control Hog.” She shrugged. “We burned a lot of calories today. I’m surprised you aren’t starving.”

  “I am,” he replied haughtily, “but I can control myself.” Take that.

  She rolled her eyes, and he clamped down on his desire to grin. “Yes,” she told him, “that’s exactly the impression you gave this afternoon.”

  He expertly popped a piece of shrimp in his mouth with his own chopsticks and slowly chewed it as she watched skeptically. “See?” he asked coolly after he’d swallowed. “Self-control.”

  “You are such a society boy,” she said with a laugh, picking up her plate, showing him a large bite of rice, and shoving it in her mouth. After she had finished it, she said, “When you’re in the military, if you want seconds, you eat fast. I guess it’s a bad habit among the civilized.” She used the chopsticks to pick up a tiny piece of broccoli and placed it elegantly in her mouth, batting her eyes and watching him with an expression of triumph.

  Will couldn’t get over the fact that she was here, that he could touch her, laugh with her, make love to her. For a few hellish hours, he thought he’d lost his chance forever. He cleared his throat. “So,” he responded soberly, forcing himself back into the conversation. “Am I to take from this that you have good manners but simply choose not to use them?”

  “I choose,” she retorted, “not to starve to death while everyone wishes they could eat bigger bites. Movie?”

  “If you insist,” he said, in his best put-upon voice.

  “Oooh, I love this one,” she cooed, bouncing a bit with excitement.

  Will’s expression softened. “You know,” he said warmly, “that’s one of the things I love best about you.” He chuckled when she threw an exasperated look his way. “No, really. It takes so little to make you happy.”

  She shrugged and picked up her soup from its safe location on the nightstand. “If it took a lot, I’d never be happy. What would be the point in that?”

  Will’s mouth went dry. It was these little comments, things she said without thinking, that hit him the hardest. The money he had and she was determined to earn—that was the least of it. She’d just been so . . .denied the things every kid should have. She’d had a place to live and food to eat, but nearly everything else she’d done on her own or with her sisters. Ed and Maddy helped, he reminded himself, but they’d been hours away in Montclair, busy starting their own family. It made him want to do something big, huge, to show her how much her happiness meant to him. But he knew Elizabeth wouldn’t like that. It was the small gestures she enjoyed. So, it was the small gestures she’d have.

  “Touché,” he told her gamely, picking up his plate and conspicuously shoving a large ball of rice into his mouth. She smiled and then dissolved into laughter as half the rice scattered onto the towels and he gazed at the mess, annoyed.

  Later that night, as Elizabeth curled up next to him on the bed, her head drooping on his chest and his arm around her as he watched a replay of the ball drop in New York City, Will Darcy kissed her head and whispered, “Happy New Year, Elizabeth.”

  Half-asleep and without opening her eyes, Elizabeth sighed happily, and mumbled “Happy New Year, Will.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Not a chance, Darcy,” Elizabeth said firmly. She was standing in front of the full-length mirror, pulling her hair up into a simple braid. “You’ve had a death grip on the remote control for three days. It’s my turn. I’m in front.”

  Will was a few feet away in the bathroom, shaving. “You chose all the movies,” he called, running his razor under the water. “And the soccer games.”

  “You liked the movies and the soccer games just as much,” she protested, pulling on her leathers. “No.”

  “But you’ve already ridden practically the length of California,” he replied calmly, without looking her way. “You have to be tired.”

  Elizabeth’s blood was boiling. Condescending . . . “If I’m tired, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Harley,” she told him pointedly. “Arch asked me to take it to Kansas City, not you. I’m responsible for it.”

  Will frowned at the mirror. “I’m responsible. And I’ve had my license a lot longer.”

  “Because you’re old,” Elizabeth shot back.

  “Older, not old,” he corrected her placidly, checking his jawline to be sure he hadn’t missed any spots.

  Elizabeth was a little sorry to see the scruff go. It gave her beard burn when he kissed her, but it was sexy. She dragged her attention away from the mirror. Don’t
let him distract you. “Accident of birth.”

  He hummed a little before shaking the razor over the sink and saying, “Funny you should use that word—no tickets, no accidents. What about you?”

  Her cheeks grew red. How could he be so unflappable when they argued? He was insufferable! “You have Jerry!” she cried, ignoring the question.

  He lifted his shoulders, then let them drop. “I still drive more than you do.”

  “No,” she said shortly. The pants were finally in place over a pair of silk thermals.

  Will stood from his position at the vanity and set the razor down. “All right,” he said, sliding a coin out of a neat pile next to his perfectly folded clothes, “heads or tails?”

  “What?” she asked, dragging her thoughts back to the present.

  “It’s only fair,” he told her. “I’ll flip, you call. Winner rides first, loser rides pillion.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “First?”

  “Elizabeth,” he said with a sigh, “the plan is to get to West Wendover today. Do you plan to be the rider the whole way? Wouldn’t it be better to cut it in half, or even take turns every few hours?”

  “Oh,” she said, the heat of her annoyance dissipating. She put her hands on her hips and turned to face him, her eyes narrowing. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  “I know I shouldn’t let you go on.” He gazed at her intensely. “But you’re beautiful when you get all fired up.” He planted a quick kiss on her lips, but Elizabeth just frowned and rubbed her forehead. Will watched with some concern. “You okay?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “Other than the whiplash you’re giving me, fine.” She walked back to the bed to pull on her thermal top, a long-sleeved t-shirt over it, then a thin fleece, and finally the leather jacket. When she turned, Will was still, eyes still trained on the spot where Elizabeth suspected her backside had been. Her backside in leather pants. She smirked.