Nick. Hi.” The woman sounded slightly surprised.
“Sorry to call so late. I just wanted to let you know that my cell phone’s reception is down. I don’t like being out of touch in case Maddie needs me, so I wanted to give you a landline number. I’m … taking care of an emergency call.”
“Oh, an emergency. Right. Of course.”
It had to be his guilty conscience that made it seem like MaryAnne had stressed the word, almost as if she suspected he was lying. “Yeah. Anyway, I’ll, um, be at this number for the rest of the night.” He recited the number Darcy had given him and apologized again, saying, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
MaryAnne laughed, sounding more like herself. “Don’t you know by now that the whole point of a sleepover is not sleeping?”
Nick winced at the very idea of being surrounded by half-a-dozen preteen girls, amped up on sugar and a lack of sleep. “I owe you, big-time.”
“Just remember that when Fluffy’s shots come due.”
“You got it,” Nick promised. “Fluffy is on the house.”
He ended the call while a movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention as Darcy stepped into the room, her arms full of sheets and pillows. Her brows rose in question as she padded barefoot across the scuffed hardwood floors and dumped everything on the couch. “Fluffy is on the house?”
“The Martins’ cat,” he explained. The cross-eyed Siamese may well have been fluffy, but Nick had long thought the feline’s name should have been something even more appropriate like “Butch” or “Killer” or “Devil’s Spawn.” Still, he’d rather take on a dozen hissing, scratching fluff-balls than host a sleepover for his daughter and five of her friends.
“Is there a lot of bartering done for work around here?”
“Sometimes,” he answered, feeling defensive even though Darcy’s question had been more curious than amused. It was part of small-town living. Times were hard, and people helped out where they could. That sense of community, of neighbors lending a hand, made Clearville … well, Clearville. Despite the occasional downside of everyone knowing everyone else’s business, Nick had always appreciated how the town’s citizens looked out for their own.
He waited, half expecting, half dreading another sexual innuendo comment. He could see one written in the sparkle of her green eyes, but maybe she’d decided to cut him some slack after all because she simply made up the couch. His gaze locked on every movement—how she bent at the waist and the pale pink material stretched across her perfect backside, how she reached to tuck the sheet behind the couch cushions and the strip of creamy skin peeked out above the hem of her sweatpants, how her hands smoothed over the soft cotton sheets …
If he hadn’t been tongue-tied before, he certainly was now. The last thing he needed was to try to fend off another one of her teasing remarks. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t serious or that he deserved her giving him a hard time. Because even the harmless banter punched holes in the shoddy patchwork job he’d done when Carol had left, revealing the empty, aching hollow he’d been trying to hide—for Maddie’s sake, for his family’s, but mostly for his own almost desperate self-preservation. If no one knew how much Carol’s desertion had ripped away from him, then he didn’t have to admit it—not even to himself.
He didn’t have what it took to laugh with a woman like Darcy anymore—if he ever had. That he shouldn’t want to flirt with her made no difference. Knowing he couldn’t, knowing he’d fail miserably, was what mattered. He’d end up seeing the same pity in her gaze as he’d seen in Carol’s when he had showed up in San Francisco with his offer to move there to keep their family together. The very thought threatened to fill the emptiness inside him with a sickening mix of humiliation and failure until the unfeeling void seemed like a blessing.
So he was glad, really, that Darcy was giving him a break.
But when she gave the floral pillow a final pat and turned to face him, Nick thought maybe he’d breathed a sigh of relief a little too soon.
“So how do you decide fair compensation,” she asked, “for say—the local vet delivering four puppies?”
Refusing to respond to her teasing, he quoted his normal rate for a house call even though it made him feel like an ass. The straight man who couldn’t bend enough to enjoy a joke.
Darcy sighed and shook her head in disappointment, but that was still better than the pity he might have seen. “I was really hoping you might go for some soothing candles or a relaxation massage.”
Yeah, right. Like the very idea of Darcy’s hands on him would be relaxing in the least. He could already feel the tension stretching to all points inside him, warning him that, at some time, his tightly leashed control was going to break. He could only hope he’d be far, far away from Darcy Dawson when it happened.
“I’ll be sure to write you a check then,” she said, a little of her teasing fading away, and damned if he didn’t miss that spark in her eyes already. “I laid out a few things in the bath down the hall for you to get cleaned up,” she added with a nod at his still damp and slightly muddy clothes. “Sleep tight, Doc.”
He thought he might have mumbled a good-night but was too busy escaping into the bathroom to stick around for a more formal response. He felt like she’d given him an out, and he was taking it. Shutting the door, he leaned back against the panel.
Like the rest of the house, the bath showed its age with pale blue throughout—tub, tile, toilet and sink. He might not know Darcy well, but she was clearly a woman of style. A woman like Carol. His ex-wife had insisted he gut the entire interior of the first house they bought in Clearville, enlisting his brother Drew’s help behind Nick’s back when she thought he wasn’t working fast enough. And yes, Drew was a contractor and amazing at his job, but dammit, it was supposed to be their house—Carol’s and Nick’s. Not Carol’s and Nick’s and Drew’s, no matter how much he loved his brother.
Shaking off the memories, Nick reached for the towel she’d left on the edge of the tub and a bundle of clothes fell to the blue and white mosaic floor. As he bent to pick them up, he found a T-shirt and sweats, but nothing like the pink feminine pair Darcy wore. The worn T-shirt was an extra large with the Trail Blazers emblem faded across the front, the pants slate gray and masculine.
Nick’s hands fisted in the soft material. He could tell himself all he wanted that he didn’t care who or how many men Darcy had dated, but when he was faced with the proof, the truth hit like a blow to the gut. He cared too damn much.
The last thing he wanted was to put on clothes left behind by some other guy. His own muddy clothes and, hell, even the bucket seat of his truck were looking better and better. With a muttered curse, he attacked the buttons on his shirt. He was making way too big of a deal out of something that could only amount to nothing.
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