Off.
Still no decision. But lying here in her backyard on a chaise longue with a cold iced tea made just the way she liked it—strong, no sugar, brewed with mint that sprouted reliably in a bed by the house—feeling the sun, light and warm, not yet the blistering full strength of a Milwaukee summer, with virile young men clambering around her childhood five-bedroom Lannon stone home, well, she’d say life was good. And not to sound selfish, but she deserved a little “good life” after so many years bearing witness to pain and suffering and despair.
Once the painters were done, she would put the house up for sale and, at age twenty-six, finally get her life under way. Four years spent nursing her beloved father to a heartbreaking end when his cancer returned a second time to claim him. Another year after that nursing Greg, her boyfriend of four years, back to health from a head injury he sustained the day she finally broke up with him. A devil inside her still wondered if he’d subconsciously engineered the car accident to punish her or keep her with him, which turned out to be nearly the same thing.
She’d cared for her father devotedly, given him what joy she could, just as he’d given her his life and time and nurturing after her mother died, and she’d grieved over the inevitable slow end that had begun when she was a teenager with his first bout, was put on hold for too few precious years of remission, and had begun again in college. She’d nursed Greg in the other direction—away from death and back to health—with slightly less selflessness. After all that had gone into her agonized decision to leave him…
But she couldn’t beat herself up over that anymore. Greg was functioning on his own, nearly back to normal, and a couple of weeks ago she got up her nerve and repeated the ghastly breakup scene, feeling like dirt to cause the poor man even more pain. However, this time she did it at his house in Madison, where she’d lived for the past year while she’d taken care of him, so that she’d be the one driving right after.
And now…
Summer waited around the corner with hot, humid breath and long lazy limbs, but spring had come, and like the new shoots pushing determinedly out of the still-chilly earth, Darcy Wolf was going to bloom. Not here in Wauwatosa, an immediate suburb of Milwaukee, where she’d lived a quarter century plus one year, a city she knew inside out, but off and away, new horizons, new adventures, new life, new Darcy.
She took a sip of the tea, ice cubes rattling appealingly in the bright orange plastic cup she’d bought last summer to brighten her and her father’s outdoor living while he could still be up and around. She could afford to buy cups made of gold now if she wanted, though she couldn’t imagine why she ever would. Her father’s death hadn’t been a surprise, but his final gift had been. Money. Money he never so much as hinted he had, from his family and from Mom’s family, from a lifetime of success as a wholesale jewelry salesman and from careful living. Her new independence had only just started to sink in. But already she had plans. Who wouldn’t? She’d quit her dull job in Madison as office manager for a psychology practice, and as soon as the house was in presentable condition and then sold, she’d take off for distant lands. Or rather, distant states, living as she’d wanted to since she was a girl obsessed with maps and dreaming about travel. Two years in Seattle. Two years in Los Angeles. Two years in Miami. Two years in Boston—the four corners of the country. She’d write about her experiences, volunteer, take ballet lessons, tap-dancing lessons, fencing lessons, learn to paint, to fix cars, to build furniture…
And then? Eventually she wanted to go back to school and build on her education degree with a master’s in school counseling. She’d be thirty-four and probably want to settle down somewhere permanently. Maybe she’d even come back here, though secretly she imagined herself becoming so chic and sophisticated that Milwaukee and Wauwatosa would seem like so much beer, cheese and sausage in comparison.
For now, in her backyard with iced tea and a whole life ahead of her tied down to no one, she had another important consideration: her hot painter needed a fantasy name so she wouldn’t have to keep referring to him as Her Hot Painter. When she and her friend Molly Johnston were teenagers, poring over a name book to see what they’d choose for their eventual children, they’d discovered—and giggled endlessly over it—that “Garrett” meant “with a mighty spear.”
That would do.
The newly christened Garrett scraped back and forth at a spot suffering from too many years of wind, rain, extreme temperatures and not enough extra energy from Darcy to deal with homeowner responsibilities. His biceps showed domed and hard below his sleeve, while triceps ridged the opposite side. The raised arm pulled up the hem of his white T-shirt and allowed an occasional glimpse of toned abdominal muscle.
The day before, and the day before that, he’d stayed later than the others. She’d spoken to him both times, casual worker-boss conversations. She’d complimented his work, he’d thanked her, they’d talked painting and nothing more. But he’d looked at her as if…
As if, as if, ohhhhh, yes, as if. She loved that as if. She could definitely come up with a few delightful fantasy activities involving the two of them.
In the hospitals while her dad or Greg slept, or were otherwise unresponsive, she’d knitted, read, done crossword puzzles—in short, become an expert at passing time. And when she could no longer bear to read or to play word games, well then, sometimes she’d daydream in embarrassingly vivid and erotic detail. Weird, maybe, but give anyone as many hours in a medical facility as she’d had to spend, and he or she would get as sick of grief and pain and frustration—hers and the patient’s—and need escape as much as she had. One handsome, brainy doctor and one buff, talented physical therapist had provided, er, stimulation. Her imagination did the rest.
Now that she was out in the real world breathing fresh air instead of eau de maladie, no longer trapped by four walls and tough emotions, she could devote even more time—guilt-free—to one of her favorite pastimes. In fact, she could imagine right now that—
Garrett turned his head as if some receptor in his brain had picked up her thoughts.
Darcy didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t been facing him, but she was glad for her sunglasses because it was possible he’d think she was asleep. Asleep holding her glass of iced tea. Sure. Why not. Uh-huh.
He nodded and touched the brim of his baseball cap—Brewers, of course, good Wisconsin man—and then he went back to scraping.
Oh, my my. How busted could she get? But she was single, straight and certainly within her rights to look.
Except now that she’d looked, she kept wanting to look and then look some more, up the strong column of his back to his broad shoulders, imagining them flexing and contracting under the cotton of his T-shirt as he worked. Then back again to his nicely rounded butt and strong legs, which she could imagine in all sorts of quite pleasant positions, as well.
Yum.
Maybe he was the ranch owner and Darcy-Anne, the feisty, abundantly cleavaged city girl who’d just bought the property next door…
Or maybe he’d be the suited sophisticate at the bar, balancing a dry martini, who nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw La Darce strut in, several-times-pierced and poured into black leather…
Or maybe the funky, long-haired student at the art museum who came upon her in a quiet out-of-the-way place, pleasuring herself, and kindly stopped to help…
Garrett turned again, this time tipping his sunglasses down and shooting her a look over them.
Busted again. But she didn’t turn away this time, either. She tipped her own sunglasses
