by Kristy Tate
His gaze focused on her and he gave her a lazy smile. “Well, hello, angel. Am I dead?”
The girls twittered and giggled.
“You’re not dead!” Mrs. Poole announced, making the girls cheer and clap.
“That’s good, because that would mean Darby would be dead, too, and no one wants that.” Chad sat up and rubbed the back of his head. His fingers had blood on them. “I must have landed on a rock.”
“Wow. That was lucky…or unlucky, I should say,” Mrs. Poole said. She lumbered to her feet and extended a hand to Chad.
He took it with hesitation, stood, and swayed. Darby rushed forward and he dropped a heavy arm around her shoulder. Mrs. Poole took his other side. He smelled of sweat, wet grass, and something else that Darby couldn’t define.
“I’ll drive you home,” Darby said.
Chad looked at the girls. “Practice…is…cancelled.”
Murmuring broke out, and all the girls trailed after Darby, Chad, and Mrs. Poole like a sad, slow parade. They inched their way up the grassy hill. Finally, they reached her car and Darby fumbled in her pocket for the key fob. The lock clicked and a girl grabbed the handle and pulled it open. Chad dropped onto the passenger seat, leaned his head back, and groaned.
Darby hurried around to the driver’s side, climbed in, and put the key in the ignition. “Where to?” she asked. “The hospital? A doc-in-a-box?”
“Nah, just take me home,” Chad said through pale lips.
“What? No way!”
“I’m not going to a doctor—or worse, an emergency room. They’ll just make me sit and wait in a cold room and eventually tell me I have a concussion. And I already know that. Take me home.”
“Chad…”
“Take me home, or I’ll find someone else who will.” He paused. “Or I’ll drive myself.”
This, of course, was the scariest option, but also the most likely. If she drove him home and his car remained at the school, he wouldn’t have a choice but to stay put and rest, and given his condition, that seemed wise. She took out her phone to Google what to do in case of a concussion.
“What are you doing?” he growled without opening his eyes.
“Looking up what to do for a bump on the head,” Darby answered.
“What does it say?”
“It says here that the patient maybe grumpy and mean.”
“It does not say that.”
“No, but it probably should.” Darby turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
“It’s okay,” she said, “What do you think happened?”
“I slipped and hit my head on a rock.”
“Ow,” Darby murmured, worrying about him and wondering if she should mention Jessica. She pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed for the ranch. “Is there someone to take care of you when we get there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “My parents are in Carmel. I’m not sure about Cecelia. She’s been doing great with her online business, by the way. I’m sure she’ll want to thank you for that.”
“Oh, that makes me so happy,” Darby said.
“And Grandpa Bern. He loves having her around. So do I.”
“So maybe Cecelia and Grandpa Bern will be home?”
Chad rolled his head so he could look out the window. “No. They won’t be there. I forgot. It’s Tuesday. Grandpa Bern meets his cronies at the Home Buffet every Tuesday and Cecelia dropped him off. She’s meeting some friends in Santa Barbara and will drive Grandpa home afterward.”
And she had just met Bern in Oak Hollow. “Oh…well, how about Jessica?”
Chad was silent for a moment. “We broke up,” he said finally in a low voice.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she lied, but hoped she sounded sincere. She reached over and squeezed his hand to help her feel better about her lie.
“I’m not.” After a beat of silence, he added, “It had nothing to do with you.” But his tone told her that it had everything to do with her.
She tried not to smile and slid him a glance to make sure he still had his eyes closed and he couldn’t see her trying to fight her giddiness.
He watched her.
She shifted her attention back to the road and put on a poker face.
“It needed to happen.” He gazed out the side window, hiding his expression. “It should have happened months, if not years, ago. We just became two different types of people. We want different things.”
Darby sat in silence, hoping he would elaborate. She didn’t have to wait long.
“She’s more ambitious.” His lips twisted into a wry smile. “She doesn’t want to be married to a P.E. teacher.”
“Her loss.” Darby reached out and patted Chad’s leg.
“Do you want to be married to a P.E. teacher?” he asked. “This is just a hypothetical question, of course.”
Darby swallowed. “Who wouldn’t want to be married to a P.E. teacher? Calisthenics every morning. Maybe a few laps in the evening? Throw in a couple of lectures on the value of hygiene. Sounds like a great life!”
“How do you feel about horses?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“Horses—big hairy rodents with mammoth teeth?” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to hide her mounting excitement as the rolled past the Paco and Maria’s house, waited for the gate to whirr open, and finally onto the ranch.
“Well, don’t let them hear you say that about them,” he said.
“You won’t tell them, will you?” She skated him a glance. She wanted to ask him about veterinarian school, but she also didn’t want him to think she had issues with his being a P.E. teacher. She remembered what Jessica had said about not liking kids. “You like kids, right?”
“Of course, I do. Why do you ask?”
“I just…I assume you must because you’re a teacher.”
“My job would be hell if I didn’t like the girls.” He smiled as if remembering a secret.
His smile made her smile.
He gazed back at her. “Remind me to kiss you when we get home.”
“Will do.”
“If I fall asleep—”
“I don’t think I can let that happen,” she said. “According to Google…”
“Google doesn’t know everything,” he said.
“No, but then, neither do P.E. teachers.”
She parked the car in front of the house. Her heart accelerated as she got out.
Chad stood on the opposite side of the car, looking wobbly and pale.
“Do you need help?” she asked.
He nodded. She came to stand beside him and wrapped an arm around his waist. Together they walked into the house, through the quiet hall to the family room. He settled onto the sofa, took her wrist and pulled her down beside him. His face was only inches from hers, their lips almost perfectly aligned.
He hesitated, as if waiting for some sign or signal. Darby wondered how long had it been since he’d kissed someone other than Jessica? But all thoughts of Jessica fled as soon as his lips touched hers. All doubts and worries flew away as Chad preoccupied her, physically and emotionally. His nearness and warmth engulfed her and somewhere, a clock chimed.
His life's seconds numbering,
(tick, tock, tick, tock)
CHAPTER 9
Minutes or maybe hours later, Darby’s phone buzzed. She broke away from Chad, leaned back, caught her breath, and pulled her phone from her pocket. Dimly, she registered her sister’s name on the screen.
What have I done? She glanced at the handsome man beside her, his cheeks flushed, his lips swollen from kissing, his eyes full of devotion.
She didn’t regret a thing.
“Darby? What the heck?” Sloane’s voice screeched over the phone. “Where are you?”
“Oh, my gosh!” Darby slapped her forehead with her palm and feigned remorse. “I completely forgot about you two!”
“How could you?” Sloane wailed. “We’ve
been sitting on this street corner for hours! You said you’d only be a few minutes!”
Hours? Darby glanced at her phone. It had only been forty-five minutes. How was that possible since it felt like her whole life had shifted? And now the only thing that mattered was Chad. “I know, but when I got to the school, Chad was hurt and…”
“Who’s Chad?”
“Chad George. He’s my client’s grandson.”
“Oh,” Sloane’s voice softened with concern. “Is he okay?”
“Yes.” Darby smiled at Chad lounging on the sofa. He grinned back as if they shared a secret. “He slipped and hit his head, but he’s more than alright now.”
“So, are you going to come and get us?”
“It’ll probably be dark soon,” Chad said. “Can they spend the night?”
Darby shrugged. She didn’t want to deal with her sister, which wasn’t fair since Sloane and Blaine’s wedding had been the entire reason for the trip. What she desperately wanted to do was snuggle back into Chad’s arms and pick back up where they’d left off just a moment ago.
“Spend the night?” Sloane squeaked.
“Why not?” Darby heard Blaine’s question through the phone.
“I have work tomorrow,” Sloane said.
“So, call in sick,” Blaine said. “Let someone else man the makeup counter.”
“You don’t take my job very seriously.”
“The mall doesn’t even open until ten,” Blaine said. “We could leave by eight and still get there in time.”
“I don’t have any of my products,” Sloane whined.
“We’ll get back in time for your beauty ritual, don’t worry,” Blaine said. “Hey, Darbs,” he said into the phone, “are you sure the Georges will be okay with our invading their space?”
He made them sound like a termite infestation—which, considering the size of her family, was an apt description.
“They can stay in the bunkhouse and you can have your old room,” Chad said. “It won’t be a problem at all.”
“Did you hear that?” Darby asked.
“Loosen up, girl,” Blaine said to Sloane. “It’ll be fun.”
She took repossession of the phone. “You’re going to come and get us, right? You won’t forget us this time?”
#
“There are some things you need to know about my family,” Darby told Chad as they drove past the gatehouse toward the highway. “And we probably need to establish some ground rules.”
“Ground rules?” Chad asked with a smirk.
Darby nodded. “I’ve tried throwing my…friends into my family without warning or rules and it’s always ended badly. Forewarned is forearmed.”
“I need to be armed?” He glanced at the road. “Where are we going? I thought your sister is in town?”
“She is, but your car is at the school. I’m taking you there. Unless you don’t think you’re well enough to drive?”
“Is there some reason you don’t want me to meet your sister?”
Darby blew out a breath. “I love all of my family—even crazy Uncle Bob, but you have to understand…”
“What? They can’t be all that bad.”
“Well, there’s a ton of them.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s best to take them on one at a time…slowly, step by step. It’s like when you have an allergy, but you don’t know what is causing your itch, so you eliminate all foods and slowly reintroduce each one trying to gauge which one gives you a reaction.”
“You’re seriously comparing your family to an allergen?”
Darby nodded slowly. “It’s a fair comparison.”
Chad whistled through his teeth.
“Look, you have one sister.” Darby placed her hand on her chest. “I have four sisters and almost as many brothers. Plus, I have six nephews and two nieces. And we all have dogs. So many dogs. It’s like a fur fest when we’re all together.”
“Are you all together a lot?”
Darby nodded. “We have dinner at our house every Sunday.” She swallowed. “But since Benjamin—”
“Brit-Boy?” Chad put in.
“I’ve been skipping out.”
“And why is that?”
She cleared her throat. “They got the wrong idea about him.”
Chad didn’t say anything.
“I probably gave them the wrong idea about him,” she clarified. “Because I had the wrong idea about him.” She bit her lip and tightened her grip on the steering wheel, hating herself for being so wrong, for loving him so fast…could the same thing be said about Chad? What had she been doing? Was she setting herself for another heartbreak?
“Your family still doesn’t know you broke up with him?”
“Can you not mention Benjamin when you meet them?”
“You still want me to be there at the wedding, right?”
Darby stopped at a traffic light. “Do you think I’m embarrassed about you? That I would ever choose Benjamin over you? It’s not that.”
“You can go,” Chad said.
“What?”
He motioned at the light. “It’s green.”
“Oh.” Relief whooshed through her. “I’m asking a lot of you. The wedding and everything.”
“I’m happy to host your sister’s wedding. I’m flattered. And I mentioned the idea of using the ranch as a wedding venue and Cecelia loves the idea.”
“And your parents and Grandpa Bern?”
“I didn’t tell my parents—because they don’t need to know. And Grandpa Bern doesn’t care, as long as no one upsets his horses.”
“Your dad and stepmother…”
“Intend to sell the ranch as soon as Grandpa dies.”
“But that could be years away!”
“And I hope it is.”
She reached over and squeezed his knee. “I hope it is, too.”
“It’s silly to not use the ranch to generate income,” Chad said. “And your sister’s wedding is the perfect trial run. Maria and Paco are happy to help clean up the chapel and the grounds.”
“And Sloane and Blaine said they’d help as well,” Darby put in.
“So—tell me more about your family.”
“I think I’ll need some help in explaining them. Maybe Sloane—or even better—Blaine! He’s perfect. He’s met them all and he can give you an outsider’s perspective.”
“But can he tell me the rules?”
“No, he can’t. Rule number one. Don’t touch me in front of my brothers or my aunts.”
“Why?”
“For two very different reasons. If you touch me in front of my brothers, they might try to kill you. You’re bigger than all of them, but combined they’ll definitely take you down.”
“Because why?”
“They’re very protective.”
“Then it’s a pity we didn’t sic them loose on Benji.”
Darby swallowed, trying to imagine her brothers’ reaction if they knew what had happened with Benjamin. “Do not mention Benji!”
“Good to know. Thanks for the warning. How about the aunts? They’re not bloodthirsty, are they?”
“No, they’re baby hungry. It’s not enough that they reproduced many times over themselves. They want more babies. They’re insatiable. It’s like a thirst that can’t be slacked.” She paused. “I told you a termite infestation is an apt description.”
#
Chad grinned when he saw the woman who had to be Darby’s sister standing on the street corner. She looked a lot like Darby, but more dolled up. She was beauty-counter beautiful—which made sense, given her profession—whereas Darby’s beauty was off-hand, casual, unassuming before you knew her, but breathtaking when you recognized her innate goodness.
Darby pulled the car up to the curb. The man beside Sloane—tall, slim with shaggy brown hair and a scruff beard—jumped in the car, but Sloane hesitated.
“When you said your client’s grandson—this is not who I had imagined,” Sloane s
aid, pointing at Chad. “I was thinking a kid. Not that I don’t care about the bump on your head.”
Chad flinched beneath Sloane and Blaine’s gazes, knowing they weren’t sure what to make of him and how he fit into Darby’s life. Which was fair, since that was something that neither he or probably Darby had figured out yet, either.
“Thanks,” Chad said.
“I just would have been a lot more sympathetic if you’d been a child,” Sloane went on.
“Good to know.”
Sloane climbed into the car and slammed the door behind her. “Who are you?”
“I told you who he is,” Darby said, glancing at her sister in the rearview mirror.
“What I mean is, who is he to you?” Sloane persisted.
When Darby didn’t answer right away, Sloane, looking like she wanted to burst with frustrated curiosity, pushed back into her seat, crossing her legs and arms. “You never mentioned this client before.”
“Maybe not to you,” Darby said. “I don’t tell you everything.”
“I tell you everything.”
“Man, I hope that’s not true,” Blaine muttered.
“Well, not everything,” Sloane admitted.
“You know, there’s such a thing as client confidentiality,” Darby said primly.
Chad grinned and looked out the window. He loved this girl.
And he could tell that Darby loved goading her sister. Chad decided to play along. “What do you do, Blaine?”
“I’m a screenwriter,” Blaine said.
“Yeah? Have you written anything I may have seen?”
“You probably didn’t see my film, Creature of the Deep…”
“Creature of the Deep? You wrote that?” Chad asked.
“Have you seen it?” Blaine asked, perking up.
“No! But I’m going to now!”
Blaine slumped a little. “It only came out in select theaters,” he said, his morose expression falling back into place. “It had a pretty low budget.”
“But to have someone even make it is huge, right?”
“Oh yeah,” Blaine brightened a fraction. “And Grover and Spike, that’s the production company, optioned two of my other screenplays.”
“Well done!” Chad said.