Improvise

by Melanie Rachel

  Elizabeth Bennet was the complete antithesis to such women. She’d let him have it when he’d said those stupid things at FORGE, but it was the glimpse he’d had of her at the Gardiners’ and Tierney’s—intelligent, funny, stubborn, and yes, beautiful, even in soccer shorts—that had made him want to know more about her. After his behavior and apology, though, he figured she would need a reason to spend a little more time with her so she could get to know him.

  Thus, Will had been very happy to get the call from Maddy Gardiner asking for help with Elizabeth’s move. Her uncle was concerned about her knee and the flight of stairs. Will was a little apprehensive about Elizabeth’s reaction to his appearance. If she wasn’t interested, he didn’t want to come across like some creepy stalker. Now, though, she was giving him the eye, and it wasn’t the death glare she’d given him at FORGE.

  She really did seem to have forgiven him, for which he was grateful. Lots of people over the years had said he was forgiven for something stupid he’d said or done only to continue to refer to it. Elizabeth had definitely been surprised to see him this morning, but once she’d had her coffee, she’d been welcoming enough. He made a mental note to always have coffee on hand for her.

  Just now, she was attempting to avoid being caught out by her uncle, but she apparently hadn’t thought he himself would notice. It amused him no end. If he flexed his arm a little more than necessary when he carried in her rolled-up rug, slowed a little on the stairs so she could watch him from her position a few steps below, brought up four dining chairs at once, or bossed two Marines around to get the sofa in the door, it was all done in the innocent spirit of testing her response.

  On his final trip into the apartment, he’d glanced past Saunderson and Denny, who were cramming pizza into their mouths, and met her steady gaze. He gave her a grin. Caught you. She turned her back to him, a rosy blush creeping up the nape of her neck as she was suddenly entirely focused on putting her dishes away.

  Will Darcy was critically evaluating the neighborhood, his lips curled up disdainfully. Ed Gardiner joined him by his truck and began to check his texts. When he looked up, he chuckled. “You should’ve seen the place I talked her out of,” he said with a smile and a shake of his head. “I nearly tossed her over my shoulder and carried her off like I did when she was six.”

  “Yeah?” Will asked. He leaned against the tailgate. “What was she like as a girl?”

  A wistful expression crossed Ed’s face. “Cutest little tornado you’ve ever seen,” he replied. “She was always trying to outdo Jane. Nearly broke her arm trying to do a handstand on the back of a horse.” Will grinned, and Ed continued. “Wild hair that would never stay in a braid, and two missing teeth up top.” He reached into a wallet thick with pictures and pulled out a small studio photo. “Here,” he said, handing it over. “Maddy and I took the girls to get pictures when we could. From the first, Maddy was as crazy about them as I was.” He smiled. “It’s how I knew for sure she was the one.”

  Will scrutinized the photo. Elizabeth’s hair was done in two neat braids. She wore a jean jacket and a red cowboy hat perched at a jaunty angle. Her green eyes beamed at the camera.

  “Are you serious about her?” Ed asked abruptly.

  Will handed the photo back and nodded. “It’s really up to her at this point,” he said. “I can’t say it’ll work out—we’ve only just met. But I want to get to know her better, and I’m not a casual dater.”

  Ed nodded thoughtfully. “All right then.” He pulled out another photo, this one of Elizabeth’s high school graduation. Elizabeth was holding her cap and gown in one hand, staring into the camera. She was thin, too thin, and there was no smile on her face. He would never have recognized it was the same girl, though he could see the similarities to Elizabeth now. Will’s eyebrows pinched together, and he frowned.

  “Things went south with her parents, and the care of her sisters was handed over to her,” he said. “It meant she wasn’t able to do other things, like play soccer or keep her grades as high as she wanted them. Her coach was angry with her. Apparently, she said she had family responsibilities, but Fanny . . .” He paused. “Fanny was my sister and the girls’ mother,” he explained.

  Will nodded.

  “Fanny told him there were no problems, so he called Elizabeth a liar and asked if she was doing drugs. Elizabeth wouldn’t ever say, but apparently her former teammates turned on her, made her senior year miserable. She was a good player, in line for captain that year, and they were angry she’d left them in the lurch, so to speak.”

  “Why are you telling me this, Ed?” Will asked, uncomfortable. “It seems like it should be Elizabeth’s story to tell.”

  Ed nodded. “You’re right. But she’s slow to trust, Will.” He shook his head, and laughed a bit at himself. “Sorry if that sounded harsh. I’m not a hit man, and I’m not trying to warn you off. I’m just saying that if you decide to take this further, be someone she can trust.” He took the photo back.

  Will understood Ed’s fears. “I promise to do my best,” he said. Ed appeared skeptical. “I have a sister,” he explained. “I’m her guardian. I understand what you’re saying.”

  Ed nodded at that and put the photo away.

  Will heard voices and saw Elizabeth chatting with an elderly man whose white hair looked like a lion’s mane. She shook his hand and gave him a smile before she headed over to the truck.

  “Mr. Pizanski,” Elizabeth announced as she joined them. “Neighbor down the hall.”

  “I have to get to the boys’ football game,” Ed said suddenly. His eyebrows lifted as his phone pinged and he read the message. “Or pick up the girls from ballet,” he said with a sigh. “Apparently Sarah’s trying to run the class again. I should put her on the football team.” He looked up. “Lizzy, why don’t you take Will out to lunch as a thank you, since the boys ate all the pizza?”

  Lizzy struck a pose and put her hands on her hips. “You buying?” she asked impertinently, before the grin broke through.

  Ed shrugged, eyes twinkling. “I would, but my niece insists she won’t take my money.” Her grin stretched into a full smile. “Besides, I’ve already fed Saunderson and Denny.”

  She gave a little laugh then and waved him off.

  Charming, Will thought, as the word he’d been searching for finally hit him. She’s charming. Elizabeth Bennet was a host of contradictions, and he wanted to learn more about her.

  “Okay,” she said, “give me the keys and we can drop the truck back at the rental place.”

  “Who said you could drive?” Will asked, grinning when her eyes narrowed.

  “I did,” she said. “It’s my truck.” She reached for the keys.

  He shrugged and held them above his head. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law, I think.”

  “I am not getting a ladder to climb up the bell tower, Quasimodo,” she shot back, moving deftly between him and the driver’s door. She folded her arms across her chest. “Give me the keys.”

  Neither of them heard Ed’s laughter as he drove away.

  “Did you know Mishmish means apricot?” Elizabeth asked as they ate their meals. She had selected a private table away from the large front windows.

  He nodded.

  “You did?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows. “I’m impressed!”

  Will opened the menu and pointed to the top of it. “It says so on the menu, under the name.”

  She grinned self-consciously. “I missed that.” She took a drink of her water. “There was an old Egyptian man in Brussels who used to call me ‘mishmisha.’”

  “He called you an apricot?” Will asked, crinkling his nose as he dipped a carrot into the hummus.

  “Little apricot,” she corrected him. She reached for a carrot. “He was a sweet man.”

  “You sure he wasn’t hitting on you?” Will replied, teasing.

  She shook her head. “I’m sure. If I really think about it, he was probably just buttering me up so I’d get him
his cigarettes.” She tucked into her shawarma. “But I liked him anyway. He told great stories.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, let’s see.” She speared a cucumber. “His favorite was about Ahti, the goddess of disorder. I think he made most of it up, but it was colorful. She had the body of a hippo and the head of a wasp.”

  Will made a face. “I take it back. He wasn’t hitting on you.”

  She shrugged. “I guess you had to be there.”

  “I’ll be honest and say I’m glad I wasn’t,” he responded with a quiet laugh.

  She nodded. Her right leg began to bounce up and down under the table, and she placed a hand on her knee to stop it. “Thanks for helping today. I told Aunt Maddy I was fine moving myself if I had one other person, and I guess she thought of you.”

  “So you didn’t think about me?” His voice did not betray any concern. “Because it seemed like you were watching me pretty closely today.”

  Elizabeth’s cheeks felt hot, and her eyes snapped up to Will’s. He didn’t seem upset. “No,” she said bluntly. Not for moving…

  He raised his eyebrows and gave her a look that was a mixture of amusement and disbelief. “I’m hurt,” he said drily. “You didn’t think about me at all?”

  “You’re sitting at a table with me having a conversation,” she told him, embarrassed. “I’m thinking about you now.”

  He eyed her silently for a few seconds before he asked, “Enough to do this again? You know, without the forced labor?” He wasn’t smiling now, but his voice was sincere.

  She summoned her courage. He already knows I was watching him today. What do I have to lose? Clearly not my pride. “Yes,” she replied directly. “I’d like that.”

  When the check came, the waitress handed it directly to her, as she’d been instructed. Will tried to reach for it, but she pushed his hand away. “What is it with you Fitzwilliam boys?” she asked. “You helped me move. I can float you a meal to say thanks.”

  Will didn’t look happy. “I’ll get the next one. No arguments.”

  “Deal,” she agreed, and tried not to appear as pleased by that idea as she felt.

  Elizabeth stood in her second bedroom, a small, long room with one window covered by a closed blind. Projected on the unadorned white wall were lines of code blown up so that she could look through them without straining her eyes. To a casual visitor, the code would have looked like foreign text, but Elizabeth’s attention was focused intently on a small section. She tapped a button on her headset.

  “Abby,” she said, “it’s an XSS vulnerability. Tenth line in—do you see it?”

  A high, reedy voice came over the phone line. “Excellent. I’ve been looking at this section so long I wasn’t sure what I was seeing anymore.”

  Elizabeth smiled. “Happy to help. I appreciate the recommendation you put in over at The Markham. It’s a good gig.”

  “You’re welcome, Dutch,” Abby replied lightly. “Any time you want to earn some real money, all you have to do is call.”

  Elizabeth winced and cast her eyes up to the ceiling. “Thanks, but no thanks, and please don’t call me that.”

  Abby’s disconcerting, evil-faerie laugh filled her ear. “Whyever not, dearie?”

  “Stop,” Elizabeth nearly pleaded.

  “You are really far too straight, Bennet.” Abby’s teasing voice became businesslike. “Listen, thanks again. I appreciate the confirmation.”

  Elizabeth relaxed. “Any time. Just keep sending me all those jobs you’re too big to take anymore.”

  Another laugh drifted through the phone line. “Will do. The guys say hi. See you later.”

  She stared at the lines of code on her wall, heard Abby’s voice in her ear, and suddenly the room felt very small. She fumbled for the doorknob and stepped quickly into the living room. She placed one hand on the wall and concentrated on catching her breath. Damn it.

  Her phone buzzed, and she glanced at the screen. It was Will.

  Just finished a meeting in Newark and I’m starving. Join me for dinner?

  She had work to do, but clearly she needed a break—she could feel the telltale ache growing behind her eyes. She whipped off her headset and dropped it on a side table before she returned to her phone.

  Sure.

  “You know,” Will said slowly, “there are a lot of really nice restaurants in the area. I offered to treat you. You could have chosen someplace more . . .” He had just assumed she’d pick a fancier place. Even Mishmish was quite a bit nicer.

  “Expensive?” Elizabeth asked, finishing his sentence. “What’s wrong with a good hamburger every now and again?”

  Will enjoyed a hamburger as much as the next guy, but a place actually called The Diner wasn’t really a date kind of restaurant. Then again, he thought, wincing inwardly, he had just sort of announced that he happened to be passing near her neighborhood and he was hungry. It hadn’t actually been a request to go out on a date. “I had a hamburger at the Gardiners’ house . . .”

  She shook her head and crinkled her nose. “Food snob.”

  “I’m not, really,” he protested.

  “They have amazing burgers here,” she promised, her eyes scanning the menu. “Oh, and the chili is incredible.” She looked up, her eyes dancing. “I have an unhealthy obsession with it. It’s painfully spicy, but I can’t stop eating it.”

  He shook his head. “I can take it pretty hot.” It was true. He was partial to spicy foods.

  “Oh yeah?” she asked, that maddening, challenging eyebrow lifted in an arch. “How hot?”

  Will began to reply, but the waitress approached, and he closed his mouth. Elizabeth ordered a salad, but also a burger, medium, with Swiss cheese and mushrooms. He ordered the chili.

  She gave him a grin as the waitress walked away. “You are so easy,” she taunted him. “You’re going to die when you eat that chili. I’m warning you. I like hot food, but this is really, really hot.”

  “Bring it on, Bennet,” he said playfully.

  Their drinks arrived, and she drank half a glass of water before she put it down and asked, “So what was your meeting about?”

  He shrugged. “I volunteer once a month for the Boys and Girls Clubs in the area. I’m on an anti-bullying panel.”

  “Wow,” she said with a nod. “That’s great.” She squinted at him. “I can’t imagine you being bullied in school, though.”

  “Well,” he said uncomfortably, “it’s complicated.”

  She waited a minute, but he didn’t offer to continue.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay,” she said. “I get it. I do think it’s nice that you volunteer your time like that, though. You must be pretty busy.”

  He nodded, relieved. He might tell her someday, but it wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have at a diner in Jersey. It was a topic to discuss in private.

  They talked, instead, about what she called her enormously boring work, though he could tell she relished it. Then she told a funny story about her niece Moira choosing a Halloween costume. “She insisted on wearing pink, but refused to go as a princess or a ballerina because ‘all the girls do that,’” Elizabeth explained with a laugh. “So Aunt Maddy said she should go as cotton candy.”

  He shook his head. “How does one find a cotton candy costume?” he asked. “This I have to see.”

  “You haven’t any idea what it means to be a Gardiner, Will,” Elizabeth told him, amused. “We make things. Well,” she clarified, “Uncle Ed and I fix things. But most of us make things.” She sipped more of her water. “Kit is in charge of all costumes. It broke her heart when my oldest nephew told her he wanted to buy one this year.”

  “Kit is your youngest sister?”

  “Next-to-youngest,” Elizabeth corrected him. “She has her heart set on fashion design school, which is why I had to share the basement with a legion of faceless mannequins. Not great when you wake up in the middle of the night.” She drank some more water. “Lydia i
s the youngest.”

  He chuckled and tried to commit the information to memory. “Lydia’s the one who keeps claiming to be the tallest?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Yes. Not sure why that’s so important. And it’s not remotely true. She has to wear these enormous platform shoes to be taller than me, but she’s persistent, I’ll give her that.”

  Their food arrived, and the savory fragrance of the chili was heavenly. His mouth began to water. He dipped his spoon into the bowl and lifted it to his mouth, the flavor of the peppers and the beef exploding against his tongue. He moaned with pleasure.

  Elizabeth was grinning widely at him. “I thought that first bite would set your hair on fire, but you seem to like it.”

  “Is that the reason you brought me here?” he asked, challenging her. “To see what I’m made of?”

  She laughed. “No, but when you started bragging, I admit the thought did cross my mind. Shows what I know. You really do like hot foods.”

  He nodded. “My parents used to travel a lot on business, and they took me with them when I wasn’t in school. I was exposed to a lot of cuisines at a young age. I think I got my love of hot food in Thailand.” He took several more bites of the chili. “This is really good,” he said. It was quite possibly the best chili he’d ever had.

  “Right?” she asked, nodding. “I love the stuff.”

  “Serrano peppers,” he said, tapping the side of the bowl with his spoon. “That’s why it has more spice—cooks normally use jalapenos. But they also used cocoa and espresso to mellow it out a bit.”

  She shook her head at him. “That’s mellow? I give in.” She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Just let the gringa eat her burger in peace.”

  Will took another bite of the chili and sighed. He was definitely getting another order of this to take home.

  Chapter Eleven