eyes gleamed angrily. ‘Because you intend seeing that he does,’ she guessed. ‘I don’t know which one of you I despise more—you or your mother!’
Logan’s throat moved convulsively. Whether from anger or some other emotion, Darcy couldn’t tell. And she didn’t particularly care, either.
‘I’ve had enough of this.’ She threw her unused napkin on the table before bending down to pick up her bag. ‘Enjoy your meal, Logan—both portions of it!’ She stood up to leave.
Logan’s hand snaked out and grasped her painfully around the wrist as she would have walked away, looking up at her with darkened blue eyes. ‘Darcy, I’m on your side—’
‘I don’t have a side, Logan,’ she assured him contemptuously. ‘Thanks to you and your mother, I don’t even have a home any more, either!’ Her voice broke slightly as she realised the truth of her words.
She mustn’t cry. She would not give Logan the satisfaction of seeing her cry again. As far as she was concerned she never wanted to set eyes on Logan, or his mother, ever again!
‘Let me go, Logan,’ she ordered coldly, looking down to where his fingers encircled the slenderness of her wrist.
‘And if I don’t?’ he challenged softly.
Her eyes returned slowly to the harsh arrogance of his face, her chin rising defiantly. ‘Then I’ll be forced to kick you in the shin,’ she told him with determination.
Darcy watched as some of the harshness left his face, to be replaced by what looked to her suspiciously like amusement. No doubt at what he considered to be the childishness of her claim, she realised.
It was the spur Darcy needed to carry out her threat, lifting her leg back before kicking forward with all the impotent rage that burned inside her, the pointed toe of her shoe making painful contact with Logan’s shin bone.
She knew it was painful—because of the way Logan cried out in surprise at the agony shooting up his leg!
But it had the desired effect; he let go of her wrist, to move his hand instinctively to his hurting shin.
‘Goodbye, Logan,’ Darcy told him with a pert smile of satisfaction, before turning on her heel and walking out through the restaurant, totally unconcerned with the curious looks that were being directed towards her, the confrontation not having passed unnoticed. Which wasn’t surprising, when Logan had actually yelled out his pain!
Her feelings of defiant satisfaction lasted until she got outside. They even lasted while she flagged down a taxi and got inside. It was only when the driver asked her where she wanted to go that her feelings of self-satisfied anger deflated.
Because, as of this morning, when she had told her father she was moving out of their home, she had nowhere to go…
CHAPTER FIVE
‘SHE hates my guts!’ Logan informed Fergus, his cousin having arrived at his office a few minutes ago. Logan hadn’t returned from the restaurant very long ago himself.
Fergus stayed perfectly relaxed as he sat opposite Logan. ‘I see you handled the situation with your usual tact and diplomacy,’ he drawled mockingly.
Logan scowled as he remembered Darcy’s earlier fury. In truth, he hadn’t had a chance to be either tactful or diplomatic—how could he have been when Darcy had already been well aware of exactly who he was when she’d joined him for lunch?
He had thought he’d had time to tell her the truth himself, but it should have occurred to him that her father, or someone else, might just drop that little bit of information into a conversation before the two of them had met today! No wonder Darcy had seemed different when she’d arrived at the restaurant!
He glowered across at Fergus. ‘I didn’t get a chance to handle anything—her father must have already told her I was Margaret Fraser’s son!’
‘Poor Logan.’ Fergus grinned, shaking his head.
‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he retorted.
‘No—but I’m hoping you’ll tell me,’ his cousin returned expectantly.
Because Logan needed to talk to someone, because, for once, he wasn’t sure what to do next, where Darcy was concerned—or if, indeed, he should do anything!—he told Fergus exactly what had transpired at the restaurant earlier.
‘And then she kicked me!’ he concluded slightly incredulously several minutes later.
Incredulous—because he hadn’t really thought she would carry out her threat. One thing he had definitely learned from this third meeting with Darcy—never underestimate her!
Logan was so lost in thought that for a couple of minutes he didn’t even notice the twitching of Fergus’s mouth, his cousin’s Herculean effort not to actually laugh. A fight he finally lost, bursting into loud laughter. At Logan’s expense.
‘She really kicked you?’ Fergus sobered enough to choke out. ‘In the middle of the restaurant?’
‘Actually it was in the middle of my shin,’ Logan replied succinctly. ‘And, yes, she kicked me; I have the bruise to prove it!’ Once out of the restaurant, sitting alone in the back of the taxi, he had had a chance to look at his leg; a purple bruise was already forming there.
‘Can I have a lo—No, perhaps not,’ Fergus amended as he saw Logan’s mutinous look. ‘I think I like the sound of your Darcy,’ he murmured appreciatively.
‘She isn’t my Darcy,’ Logan rasped, not even sure she would ever talk to him ever again.
Which was a pity. He could still remember how good she had felt in his arms when he’d kissed her the evening before—
Forget it, Logan, he instructed himself sternly. There were too many complications attached to being attracted to Darcy Simon. Complications he intended dealing with at the earliest opportunity.
‘So what happens now?’ Fergus seemed to guess at least some of his thoughts.
Logan pondered awhile. ‘A meeting with my mother,’ he bit out with obvious reluctance.
His cousin looked surprised. ‘Will that do any good?’
‘Probably not,’ Logan conceded. ‘But it might make me feel better. These are good people she’s playing around with.’ He paused, then went on, ‘Daniel Simon was recently widowed; he doesn’t need someone like my mother messing up his life.’
‘Hmm.’ Fergus looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder—’ He broke off as the door opened after the briefest of knocks.
Talk of the devil—!
Logan’s gaze narrowed as his mother walked unannounced into the room, as beautiful as ever in a fitted black suit and vibrant red blouse.
‘Karen told me you were closeted in here with Fergus,’ she said, closing the door behind her.
Fergus had stood up at his aunt’s entrance, glancing across
