- -
- 100%
- +
He had taken the baby and ordered Darcy to get some sleep. And somewhere in the year that followed, he’d figured out that Darcy wasn’t the only one who had benefited from his involvement.
His issues didn’t matter at this moment. Right now his job was to step up and get them through this. The rest could wait.
“Oh, Cady isn’t shy about letting anyone know what she can do,” he said to Xander. “She doesn’t walk by herself yet, but she pulls up on furniture—”
“And legs,” Darcy added softly.
“And then she cruises. You know, pulls herself sideways,” he added in response to Xander’s blank look. “She can crawl faster than Lulu can run, though she’s letting up on that.”
“She has a couple of words.” Darcy’s voice shook a little, but there was an underlying determination that made him want to cheer for her. “She says Mum mum, and Eeeee, which I—we—think means Ian. And Ru for Lulu, though we don’t know if she’s trying to say her name or imitate the sound of barking.”
“You sound like a smart one, Cadence Joy.”
The pride and wonder in Xander’s voice made Ian pull Darcy tighter against his side. She molded herself to him. He was pretty sure that this time she wasn’t seeking to deceive Xander as much as to hold herself up. Didn’t matter to him. As long as he was helping he didn’t much care about the details.
But he couldn’t help but notice how perfectly she fit against him.
Absolutely normal. Proof you’re over Taylor. Biology reminding you that you’re still alive.
It had been hard enough to make himself swallow that line the past few months, noticing Darcy from a distance. Now, with her warmth and softness glued to his side, he was almost grateful for Xander’s presence. At least with an audience Ian was less likely to throw caution to the wind and do something really stupid.
Cady let out a whimper that he recognized as the prelude to a lungful of protest. Darcy moved out of his embrace. The places where she had pressed against him seemed to blink in shock.
“Here.” She scooped Cady from Xander and cuddled the child tight against her chest. “Don’t want her getting scared off at the first meeting, right?”
Everyday words, but he could only guess what they had cost her. He wasn’t sure if he was more amazed by the casual way she tossed them out or by the fact that she returned to his side. He needed no prompting to nestle her against him once again.
Ah, that’s better.
He pushed the traitorous thought aside. Time to convince Xander to leave so he and Darcy could go inside and figure out what to do next. Especially about this fake relationship they had just invented. The one he had to remember was only that—fake.
“So, Xander. What’s next for you? Are you staying here in Stratford?” Say no. Say no.
Xander’s usual confidence switched to uncertainty. “I— Jeez. I have something lined up, a job in cottage country, but...” He ran one finger gently down Cady’s arm. “Things have changed.”
Yeah, they had. Ian could give him that one. Maybe even a few points for rethinking his plans now that those changes had hit him.
But Ian wasn’t backing off until Darcy gave the word.
Cady whimpered and burrowed her head into the cleft between his shoulder and Darcy’s. Xander’s hand dropped away. Ian wasn’t sure if he should feel guilty, victorious or ashamed, so he settled for giving thanks that—for the moment, at least—he was still in the picture.
Darcy spoke up. “She’s getting tired. Xander, why don’t you give me your number and we’ll set up a time to get together again. Let’s see, today is Tuesday, so maybe—”
“Tomorrow?” Xander had never sounded so excited about anything for as long as Ian had known him.
Darcy stiffened a little in Ian’s embrace. “I’ve got a lot going on over the next couple days. How about the end of the week?”
A lot going on? Darcy worked from home and had no appointments other than delivering Cady to and from her mornings at day care. He knew for a fact that she had kept the next few days open, because he was her usual hairdresser-and-dentist babysitter, and he was heading to Comeback Cove Thursday morning.
If Darcy was putting Xander off, it meant she wanted time. For what, he didn’t know. But he’d be damned if he would let her set up something for the days he wasn’t going to be around.
Unless, of course, that was what she wanted...
But no. He hadn’t imagined that wariness that had come over her. Until he knew she felt safe, he was going to stick to her like the snap pea vines clinging to Lulu’s coat as she slinked out of the garden.
“Hang on, honey.” He thought fast. “Did you forget that we’re leaving in the morning?”
“I—”
He turned to Xander, watching them with way too much curiosity. “We’re going up to see my folks, spend Father’s Day with my dad. So it’ll be next Monday, Tuesday, before we get back.”
“Oh, right.” Darcy laughed and elbowed him in the ribs while adjusting Cady. Accidentally? “How could I forget? Like I said, teething, not enough sleep.” She shrugged. “It does a number on me.”
Xander studied them, skepticism apparent in his crossed arms and narrowed eyes. Ian’s stomach clenched. The truth would have to come out at some point, but damn it, he didn’t want that to happen until he’d had a chance to talk to Darcy and find out what she needed.
He slipped sideways, turning to slide his hands around a droopy, half-asleep Cady. “Here. I’ll take her in while you get Xander’s number.”
Darcy nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”
He paused, considered and then—before he could talk himself out of it—brushed a quick kiss against her mouth.
He kept it light. Fast. Barely long enough to register the hint of ginger on her breath, nowhere near hot enough to account for the rush of God, yes that hit him even as he reminded himself that it was all for show. It was clumsy, so awkward that if Xander had been taking notes, he probably would have seen through them in a heartbeat.
But, damn, she tasted good.
And, whoa damn, when her lips parted—purely from shock, he knew—he had to drag himself away.
And, hot damn, but if this was a mistake, it was the best one he’d made in a long time.
CHAPTER THREE
TEN MINUTES AFTER saying goodbye to Xander, fifteen minutes after Ian had bestowed the third surprise in her hat trick of shocks for the day, Darcy pulled down the shade in Cady’s room and started the recording of acoustic covers that passed for lullabies chez Maguire. With all the routines accounted for, she turned on the monitor and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind her and leaning against it while she breathed.
“Dear God, Maguire, when you mess up, you don’t hold back, do you?”
So much for her carefully organized life. So much for those daily affirmations reminding herself that she was strong, she was independent, she could handle whatever the universe threw her way. In a little over an hour, that had all been blown to hell.
Xander was back.
Which she had been dealing with until she’d found out he’d been in freakin’ jail.
And then Ian had kissed her.
Her fingers rose to her lips and she gave a shaky laugh. Yes, everything else was crumbling around her, but her brain kept tugging her back to that moment in the yard when Ian’s mouth had brushed hers. For one second, maybe two or three, her worries about Xander and custody agreements and criminal acts had been banished by the soft play of warm lips against hers. It had been reassuring and comforting, a welcome reminder that she wasn’t alone, which was, she was sure, the only reason he had done it. And she really hoped that was the only reason she kept coming back to it. It was nothing more than her touchstone, a moment of peace and sanity when everything else was whirling.
A nice story. Too bad her treasonous brain also insisted on reminding her of the infrequent but oh-so-vivid dreams she’d had over the past few months. Dreams in which Ian played a highly significant and usually shirtless role.
Every time she woke from one of those dreams, she spent the next few days staring at the ground or at Lulu or praying that his work would take him out of town for an extended period. Because, seriously, lusting after her best friend?
At least she’d pulled away from the kiss before her long-denied hormones had kicked in. She could not, would not, upset the balance of their lives more than had already been done. Especially not at a time such as this when she could really use a friend.
But how was she supposed to look at him now?
Not that she had a choice. He was in her kitchen waiting for her, as he’d done so many times over the past year. She had to tell him the truth about Xander and find out what kind of criminal DNA was swimming in Cady’s genes, all while feeling as if she’d been plugged into an outlet and was being hit by bolts of electricity at random times and in the worst possible places.
And what kind of parent was she that of all the things that had happened, she continued to fixate on the one that had made her feel better for a minute, the three seconds that had served her?
Dear Lord, she was turning into her mother after all.
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook away the thought. She would get through this. She would talk to Ian—talk, Maguire—and send him to his apartment. She would sit at the computer and come up with a strategy. Later, if she was still this...unsettled, she would put Cady to bed and have herself a private film festival. One featuring Harrison Ford in his prime, fully whipped. Tomorrow, she could wake with a clear head and focus on what mattered—getting Cady through this change without turning her childhood into the same kind of convoluted mess Darcy’s had been.
All she had to do was get through the next hour.
* * *
LOOKING IAN IN the eye as she descended the stairs took about as much intestinal fortitude as telling Xander that he had hit the conception jackpot, but Darcy made herself do it. She was rewarded with a glimmer of his usual smile.
Crap. She had forgotten the hurt she’d spotted in his face right after Xander’s arrival. The conversation ahead was shaping up to be as complicated as the ones she’d just navigated.
She rubbed her temples. Couldn’t anything ever be simple?
“Headache?”
It was as good an explanation as any. “Yeah.”
“Need anything?”
This was the Ian she knew—helpful and supportive. The caregiver. The trusted friend, not the Lust Igniter.
“I’ll be okay after I grab something to eat. Thanks.” She glanced around. “Lulu?”
“I think she’s worn-out. Last time I saw her she was heading for her basket.”
“I’m jealous.”
There was nothing but the usual amount of concern on his face when he studied her. The inner caveman that had shown up while they were outside must have departed with Xander. Thank heaven.
“We should talk,” he said slowly. “But if you’re not up for it right now...”
“No. I mean, yes.” She blinked and dredged up a smile. “I’m fine. But I think, maybe, this calls for a beer. Want one?”
“God, yes.”
She pulled bottles from the refrigerator, grabbed a jar of salsa while she was there. “Can you get the chips?”
He didn’t hesitate before opening the correct cupboard and snagging a bag of tortilla chips from the top shelf, where she stored them out of her everyday reach. It hit her as he moved with easy confidence around her kitchen how thoroughly entrenched he was in her life. He knew his way around her kitchen, he dragged the trash to the curb every Thursday, he changed her daughter’s diapers, all without asking how or where or when.
She really couldn’t blow this.
“Let’s go out on the porch,” she said when he pulled a chair from the table. The front porch. Public. Less chance of her breaking down. Or, worse, reliving that kiss and feeling tempted to do something truly stupid.
He raised an eyebrow but picked up the monitor and followed her outside.
She set the food on the small wicker table and climbed into her favorite hammock swing suspended from the roof. Ian settled in the oversize chair he had added to the porch last summer, the day he’d announced he was signing up for baby rocking duty.
After a scoop of salsa on a chip and a long, welcome draw on her beer—damn, she had needed that—she was as ready as she would ever be.
“Okay.” She ran her nail beneath the label on her bottle. “I have a million questions, and I bet you do, too, but first and most important, thank you. You got me through something I kind of knew would have to happen someday, but I sure wasn’t looking forward to it. Having you here made the whole situation— Okay, so it got kind of screwy there for a while, but I—”
“I shouldn’t have kissed you.”
She blinked. He was jumping straight to that?
“I don’t want you to think— I mean, it was all for Xander,” he said in a rush. “You know that, right?”
“Of course.” Stop weeping, stupid hormones. “It’s fine. We were winging it, and, okay, maybe I wouldn’t have done that, but it worked, and that’s what matters.”
“Good.” He grabbed a chip but instead of eating it, he stared at it as intently as if a secret code were printed there. “I had no idea that you and Xander— But I wasn’t planning to pull the whole act out there, especially not if you’d been glad to see him. But when I came outside you looked scared when I said I would leave, so I... I don’t know. Reacted.”
She thought back, replaying the sudden appearance of Caveman Ian. Now it made sense. “Ohhh. Yeah. I was kind of spooked. Xander had just told me where he spent the last— Jeez, I don’t even know how long he was in jail. Or what for.” She peeked at Ian. Good. He’d lost the pinched look around his eyes. “Do you?”
“He didn’t go into detail, but based on his past run-ins—”
“Past run-ins?” It was a miracle she still had enough air to speak given the way her breath had flown from her lungs. “You mean this wasn’t the first time?”
“Easy, Darce. He’s not a hardened criminal, okay? He had some brushes with the law when we were in university, but never anything that led anywhere. And nothing violent. It’s all cyber stuff. Breaking into corporate accounts, things like that. As far as I know, he never does anything against individuals. I’m sure in his mind he’s some kind of modern-day Robin Hood.”
“Oh.” Some of the tension seeped from her shoulders. “Thanks. That helps.”
He nodded and stuffed the chip into his mouth. She had a feeling it was her move.
“Here’s the story,” she said at last. “Xander and I never had a real thing. So you weren’t interrupting a reunion of long-lost lovers or anything like that.”
The relief on his face told her that he had indeed been wondering. But was he glad to know he hadn’t intruded, or relieved that there wasn’t anything to interrupt in the first place?
Not that it mattered, of course.
“Remember when Xander was here and you went away over Labor Day weekend?”
“Right. For Hank’s wedding.”
Now, why did the mention of his brother’s wedding make him tense up again? Maybe it had something to do with his ex-fiancée. From what Darcy had gleaned from the bits and pieces Ian had let drop, the ex had continued living in Comeback Cove.
“Well, that Friday night was when Jonathan and I broke up.” She snagged a chip and snapped it in half.
“Jonathan.” There was a hint of a question in his voice when he mentioned her ex, and she knew what he was asking.
“I know. You thought he was Cady’s father. I’m sure everyone thought that, but fortunately—or not—he isn’t. That night—well, let’s just say it didn’t end gracefully.”
Call her the Queen of Understatement. On their six-month anniversary she had thought it might be safe to ask what he saw in their future. What she had ended up seeing was his back as he’d run as far and fast as he could.
“Anyway, I made a horrible scene, then came home and went out in the backyard and got rip-roaring drunk. When I got to the maudlin stage and decided I needed a babysitter, I went up to the apartment looking for you, forgetting you weren’t there.”
“But Xander was.”
Oh, if his voice were any more neutral, he would have been beige. “Yep. I bawled all over him, and when I was cried out he said he’d help me get back to my place. I think his intentions truly were honorable, but by then I was starting to sober up and I didn’t want to, so I grabbed some vodka and convinced him to join me. And things kind of...escalated.”
Silence hung between them. On the street, a car cruised past, bass thumping out the windows. A kid shouted to a friend on the other end of the block.
“It was one night,” she said, leaning forward, praying with everything she had that he would believe her. “One stupid, drunken night when all I wanted was to forget.” Forget Jonathan’s heavy sigh when she’d screwed up her nerve and had posed the question, forget the disgust on his face when she had started to cry, forget her panicked drunken certainty that she would never be held again. “I woke up the next day and thought of everything that could have happened and had a major freak-out.”
“And Xander?”
“Was already gone.”
He eased back into his chair. “That’s no surprise. I mean,” he added hastily, “not to say anything about you. Or your... Crap.”
“Are you blushing?”
As if she’d unplugged a dam, he turned even redder. “This isn’t the easiest conversation.”
No. But considering he had watched her stomach explode during her pregnancy, seen her nursing nonstop in those first weeks when she was too exhausted to make more than a token attempt at covering up and listened to her complain about every oozing, aching body part, his reaction was unexpected. And surprisingly sweet.
“I’m sorry. I won’t tease. I know what you mean.”
“All I was trying to say is that Xander isn’t one for the long haul. As I’m sure you noticed.”
Which brought them straight to her biggest fear regarding Cady.
“I don’t care that he took off the next day. Frankly, if I had been able to lift my head without feeling like I’d been shoved into a tornado, I might have done the same thing. It wasn’t my finest moment.” She leaned forward, arms resting on her knees, trying to decide how to ask what she needed to know without revealing too much. “But it’s different now. You’ve known him longer than I have. Do you think he has it in him to stick around, or would he be one of those guys who, you know, only stays long enough to mess up everything?”
Ian studied her for an unnervingly long moment. At times she swore he could read her mind. This was one of the moments when she longed for a way to shield her thoughts from him. It was one thing for him to know that he was her most trusted friend. It would be quite different if he figured out that to her, what they had was the closest thing she could imagine to the family she’d lost when she was too young to appreciate it.
“Ah. Gotcha.” At last he lifted his beer for a long draw. She’d seen him do that hundreds of times over the past couple of years. Why, this time, did she have to force herself to stop gazing at the lines of his neck? Why did she find herself swallowing in tandem with him?
Why did she suspect she was now the one blushing?
He finally lowered the bottle. “I don’t know,” he said. “Back in school, Xander was a goof but basically a straight-up guy. Since then...I don’t know. He changed.”
Not the answer she wanted, for sure.
“I got the feeling you wanted some time to figure out what should happen next with him,” he said. “That’s why I said what I did about us going to Comeback Cove.”
Oh, holy crap. Yet another twist that had slipped through her grasp. Thank God Cady was safely tucked into her crib. At this rate, Darcy wouldn’t trust herself to keep a hamster alive.
“Yeah, about that.” She sat back in the hammock, watching him carefully for signs of hedging. “Where did that come from?”
“I dunno. We were pulling off the ‘we’re a couple’ thing, and Lulu growled, and I thought, damn, what if Xander comes back when I’m not around? Remember, I didn’t know what was making you so skittish. I thought maybe you were afraid of him for, well, for more than just Cady’s sake.”
It took a moment for his words to register. “You thought he raped me?”
“Not really. But I thought there might have been some...coercion.”
Her indignation melted. No wonder the poor guy had let his inner caveman fly.
“No,” she said softly. “Nothing horrible happened.” Nothing especially mind-blowing, either, from what she could remember, but no way was she going to say that. Ian was already flashing as red as the fire in his forge. “Things got lousy and complicated, and, yeah, I’m not looking forward to refiguring everything now that he’s back. But Cady is the best part of my life. No matter how much I curse my own stupidity, I have absolutely no regrets.”
He nodded and rocked back in his chair, but didn’t look as though he believed her.
“What?” She snagged another chip. “You’re trying to say something but you don’t know how. I can tell.”
“Jeez, Maguire, can’t I hide anything from you?”
Ah, that was more like it. Teasing, complaining, fake indignation—everything she usually associated with Ian. That post-kiss lust—okay, that had been interesting, but she wasn’t going to let it ruin their easygoing swing.
“Don’t tell me you were serious about me going to Comeback Cove with you?”
She hadn’t thought it was possible for him to turn any redder. She was wrong.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” he said, setting his beer on the table. “One, we—I—led Xander to believe we’re a couple. So if I go without you it might look strange.”
“Because people who are together never do anything separately. Right.”
“To paraphrase Indiana Jones, I’m making this up as I go, okay?”
Boom! She had a sudden image of Ian in a leather jacket and fedora, a whip in his hand and a smile that could melt a thousand Arks on his lips.
Looked as if she was going to have to come up with an alternate plan for the evening.
“If you come with me it would give you time to figure out what happens next. Maybe talk to a lawyer. Have you done that yet?”
“No. I should have, I know, but when he vanished off the face of the earth, it kind of slid down the priority list.”
He nodded. “You need legal advice, and we need to decide what to do when Xander shows up expecting to see us as a couple. Since I was already planning to go home—”
“Not until Thursday.”
He shrugged. “So I’ll go a day early. My mother will be ecstatic. At the time, saying that you were coming along seemed like the best solution.”
“Hmm.” It seemed pretty caveman to her, but, she had to admit, it was nice to know he’d been trying to help.
“Besides,” he added so casually that her skin prickled in warning, “your grandmother is there, and she would love to see Cady.”
She’d always known that renting to the grandson of her grandmother’s best friend would come back to bite her someday.
“Did Nonny pay Moxie to make you say that?”
“Get real, Darce. You could use some time. I’m going to Comeback Cove anyway. And Helene would give her eyeteeth to have you and Cady under her roof for a few nights.”
Did he have to sound so reasonable? Getting pissed off at him would be so much more satisfying than understanding him.
Except he had a point.
She dipped a chip into the salsa, focused on creating the perfect blend of tomato, onion and peppers. It took a lot of effort.
“You gonna eat that or hang it in an art gallery?”
She glared. “Don’t interrupt my stalling tactic to discuss your stalling tactic.”
His laugh, low and reassuring, was like having someone pour warm water over her—soothing and welcome and oh so comforting.