Glass Slippers and Unicorns

by Carole Mortimer

  Darcy could tell that the subject of the necklace was closed, for now at least, and she did have to buy herself a nightgown before tonight. Besides, shopping would kill a little time, and that had to be better than sitting around the house with Diane, getting herself even more deeply entangled with the lies about her relationship with Reed.

  ‘Reed is very worried about your sister and her husband,’ she ventured casually on the drive.

  Diane pulled a face. ‘Linda and Wade are always arguing. Wade’s a corporate lawyer, and very serious when it comes to his job, but when he gets home he likes to relax, have fun. Linda is one for appearances. It doesn’t make for complete harmony, I’m afraid,’ she shrugged.

  ‘It’s nothing—deeper, than that?’

  Diane didn’t seem to resent the personal questions from a relative stranger. ‘They’ve been married for six years now, I think Wade wants to have a family of their own. He doesn’t have any family of his own left, and I think he wants to father a few O’Neals.’

  ‘But Linda doesn’t want children?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’ She sighed. ‘I think Wade has issued an ultimatum.’

  Darcy frowned at that. ‘Having children when you don’t really want them can’t be the answer.’

  ‘I’m sure Wade knows that,’ Diane said with certainty. ‘He’s just trying to shock Linda out of what amounts to plain stubbornness now. Marie’s pregnancy isn’t helping the situation.’

  ‘Marie and Mike seem very happy.’

  ‘They are,’ Diane confirmed, driving the large car with ease. ‘Mike has a lot on his mind right now with the stagnation of property speculation, but I’m sure they’ll muddle through. I’m just glad Chris got out when he did.’

  ‘Got out?’ she prompted softly, feeling a little guilty about the ease with which she was extracting information about the family from Reed’s sister. But it had to be better than Reed asking himself.

  ‘He and Mike were in partnership together for a while.’ The other woman shrugged. ‘Until Chris saw the hotel and decided to buy and run that instead. It’s one of the most exclusive in the area,’ she added proudly. ‘Of course, tourism is down a little the last couple of years because of the strength of the dollar, but we’re still doing very well.’

  That was obvious from the house and the way the couple lived. But it was also obvious that all of the family had their problems, Wade feeling some resentment towards the Hunters because Linda seemed quite satisfied with them as her family instead of having children of her own; Mike, and consequently Marie, having monetary problems; Diane and Chris feeling a tightening of their purse strings, too. But none of those things seemed enough for any of them to want to obtain money at Reed’s expense. Although Reed didn’t seem to realise his family had any problems.

  He frowned heavily later that night when she told him what she had learnt from Diane, the two of them once again lying in the beds across from each other, Darcy more comfortable this evening in the loose cotton nightshirt she had acquired on their shopping trip this morning, the material not even remotely see-through; she had checked that before buying it!

  Reed had walked about naked for several minutes before getting into bed, as if he expected her to be used to unclothed men in her bedroom. Even if she had been, she was sure she would still have been affected by the lithe beauty of his body, looking like the statue of Apollo she had once admired. Except he was very much a flesh and blood man.

  They had dined alone with the Donavans this evening. Chris was a little more outgoing when not in a crowd, although the bubbly Diane still monopolised much of the conversation, and the three of them were happy to let her do so, Reed being in a taciturn mood since his return from his visit to ‘friends’. Darcy relaxed by the pool before going for a swim; she had been wrong about the heat, she was starting to enjoy it.

  ‘I can’t really blame Wade for wanting a family; I’d be getting a little impatient myself by now,’ Reed finally grated. ‘But, hell, I can’t believe that would be enough for him to let me down in this way!’

  Neither could Darcy. ‘He only wants a family, Reed. That doesn’t seem to be enough reason to fraudulently obtain money at your expense. There has to be more to it than that.’ She shook her head. ‘Didn’t you find out anything today?’

  He sighed. ‘The people actually making the deals aren’t talking, obviously, and no one else seems to know that anything strange is going on.’ He scowled. ‘In fact I’m being given the impression I’m imagining things!’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked grim, and Darcy couldn’t blame him for feeling the way that he did. He loved all of his family, and the strain of thinking one of them was involved in this was starting to show. She decided it was time to take his mind off his problems for a few minutes.

  ‘Diane seemed very interested in the unicorn necklace you gave me,’ she mentioned casually, watching for his reaction.

  One brow rose slightly. ‘Oh?’

  She could sense the tension in him even though it wasn’t physically noticeable, just a feeling she had, his eyes staying an emotionless green. ‘Why do you think that was?’

  He shrugged, looking indifferent. ‘I have no idea. Maybe she just liked it.’

  ‘She guessed you had given it to me before I told her you had,’ Darcy persisted.

  ‘Lovers often give each other jewellery,’ he dismissed.

  ‘Reed—’

  ‘Look, could we go to sleep now?’ He turned to her with blazing eyes, the glow from the bedside lamp between them giving an ebony sheen to the curly hair on his chest that disappeared in a V towards his thighs, a sheet resting lightly over his hips. ‘It’s late and I’ve been up since dawn.’

  ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’ Her eyes widened.

  ‘That damned sheet kept slipping off you all night,’ he rasped impatiently, unrelenting in the face of her embarrassment at this disclosure. ‘I now know you have a birthmark on your—’

  ‘Reed…!’

  He gave a sudden grin, looking years younger, his eyes gleaming mockingly across the short distance between the two beds. ‘It’s just where your silken legs meet the rest of your body,’ he added with satisfaction. ‘And it isn’t visible when you wear a bikini,’ he drawled.

  ‘I know that.’ She was sure the colour of her cheeks matched the red of her hair. She had been so sure she had clung on to the sheet all night! But Reed couldn’t have seen her birthmark any other way.

  ‘The shape of a half-moon,’ he murmured musingly. ‘You would have been burnt as a witch in the old days; they didn’t take kindly to red-haired women with the mark of night on their body!’

  ‘Or green-eyed men with hair as black as the devil!’ she instantly returned.

  He smiled, his face bathed in warm light. ‘Shall I put a warlock spell on you?’

  He already had! All this talk of witches and warlocks, and that birthmark on her thigh, wasn’t doing a thing for her equilibrium. The sheet had slipped off him, too, last night, and she hadn’t been able to draw her gaze away from the muscled contours of his body, knowing that he would be formidable when he was aroused. Why couldn’t he let that ‘chemistry’ take over? She certainly wouldn’t mind!

  ‘Are you going to be able to go back to working for me after this?’

  He was scowling when her startled gaze met his. ‘This?’ she repeated in a puzzled voice.

  ‘Yes, this.’ He looked around pointedly at the bedroom they shared.

  She chewed on her inner lip. It probably would be difficult going back to just being employer and secretary, their relationship possessing an air of intimacy now that wasn’t all pretence. But she couldn’t imagine not working for him, seeing him every day.

  ‘I’m sure I can,’ she replied briskly. ‘After all, we’re only sharing the room.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  Sexual tension crackled in the air between them, Darcy’s eyes widening as she saw the look of sleepy passion in R
eed’s eyes. She swallowed hard. ‘Chemistry?’

  He drew in a ragged breath. ‘You’re more than just passably attractive, Darcy,’ he told her huskily. ‘And I’m finding I have a desire for freckles. They’re all over your body—’

  ‘It’s the heat,’ she explained awkwardly.

  ‘I don’t care what it is,’ Reed rasped. ‘I want to kiss every one of them!’

  She made a choking sound as her breath seemed caught in her throat and started to cough, hastily averting her gaze as Reed got out of bed to come over and tap her on the back. ‘I’m all right now.’ She pushed his hand away, looking up at him uncertainly. ‘Did you mean it?’

  ‘Of course I meant it,’ he sat down beside her on the bed, smoothing back the hair at her temple. ‘I’ve always thought it.’

  She was mesmerised by the liquid emotion in his eyes, held captive by those stormy depths. ‘Always, Reed?’ She suddenly realised the implication of what he had said. ‘But—’

  ‘Not now, Darcy,’ he uttered with a groan. ‘I’ve tried to stay away from you, in fact I’ve been amazed at my own success in keeping my hands off you. But you look so damned sexy in that nightshirt—’

  ‘Sexy? Me?’

  Reed’s expression darkened. ‘Whoever he was, he was a bastard,’ he grated. ‘You—’

  Darcy had stiffened. ‘Whoever who was? Reed, what do you mean?’

  ‘The man who had you so screwed up in knots when you first came to work for me you were afraid to let anyone near you!’

  Her gaze dropped away. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she abruptly evaded.

  ‘Darcy?’ He tilted her chin so that she looked at him, her eyes blue lakes of pain. ‘Hell,’ he grated harshly. ‘He’s still there in your eyes!’ He stood up to turn away. ‘You seemed to be different lately, and I—Oh, hell!’ He pulled on his denims, their snug fit revealing that he wore nothing beneath.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Darcy came up on her knees to watch him as he strode to the door.

  ‘Out of here,’ he rasped. ‘It doesn’t really matter where!’

  She slowly sank back down on to the pillows once he had gone. There had been a man, Reed was right about that, but she had let him love her for all the wrong reasons, had let him hurt her… But to explain about Jason she would have to tell Reed everything, and she couldn’t do it.

  One mistake, that at the time she hadn’t even thought of as being one, and it had ruined and governed the rest of her life. Would it never change?

  * * *

  ‘Come on, lazy, we’re going out today,’ mocked that familiar voice as her nose was gently tweaked.

  Reed. And he didn’t seem angry any more. She opened her eyes as she smelt coffee.

  Reed sat on the side of her bed, a cup of coffee in his hand. ‘I thought this might wake you,’ he grinned. ‘I’m sure you’re addicted!’

  Darcy eyed him warily as she drank the hot brew. He hadn’t returned here last night by the time she fell asleep, but wherever he had spent the night it seemed to have agreed with him; he looked rested and relaxed. And she felt a wreck! It just wasn’t fair the way a man never looked as bad as a woman, even in the morning, after a supposedly disturbed night.

  ‘Reed—’

  ‘Chemistry, Darcy,’ he cut in self-derisively, his hand gentle against her cheek. ‘I’m finding this platonic proximity a bit of a strain.’

  ‘Is that all it is?’ She frowned at the explanation. ‘Last night—’

  ‘Bringing you here was a mistake.’ He stood up, his hands thrust into the pockets of his denims. ‘This situation between us was a mistake,’ he added grimly. ‘If only I’d realised everyone would expect us to sleep together!’ This last seemed to be added almost to himself.

  Darcy turned to put her cup down on the side table so that he shouldn’t see her wince of pain at the way he didn’t even try to pretend he had found last night anything but a mistake of the moment, that close proximity with a vulnerable woman proved too much for this highly sensual man. She didn’t like being thought of as a convenience, or Reed ‘finding he had a desire for freckles’.

  ‘Maybe I should go back to London—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I need you here, Darcy.’ His expression was remote. ‘I know I’m being ungrateful, I just—I’m sorry, Darcy. Stay,’ he encouraged softly.

  She would walk barefoot through a pit of snakes if he asked her to! But she wasn’t sure staying on here wasn’t going to be even more lethal.

  ‘Please, Darcy.’

  How could any woman resist him when he asked so intensely? The fact that many women hadn’t even tried to resist him, and on a completely different level, was ignored as she slowly nodded her head. ‘All right, Reed.’

  An emotion flared in darkened green eyes, too fleeting to be analysed before it disappeared as Reed smiled. ‘I’ll get you breakfast before we leave,’ he offered. ‘Diane went to the hotel with Chris today as I told her we would probably be going out,’ he said, explaining the reason for his sister’s absence.

  ‘I can get my own breakfast,’ Darcy protested. ‘I only want toast.’

  ‘And coffee,’ Reed teased.

  ‘And coffee,’ she acknowledged ruefully.

  He hesitated at the door. ‘Feel like a drive today?’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she shrugged.

  ‘As we’re supposed to be on vacation I thought we could play tourist today,’ he said derisively. ‘Busch Gardens is just over an hour’s drive away. Unless you would prefer Disney World and Epcot?’

  ‘Which is the quietest?’

  ‘Busch Gardens,’ he answered without hesitation. ‘But we don’t have to go to either if you would prefer to stay here—’

  ‘Oh no, I want to go out,’ she told him eagerly. ‘I’ve never been on an expenses paid holiday before.’

  ‘What makes you think I’m paying your expenses? Only joking, Darcy,’ he teased as she suddenly realised he had never said he was.

  ‘Getting paid for having my complete attention; what more could any woman ask for?’

  What indeed? Reed may have meant the remark as a joke, but it was all too true for her; what more could she ask for?

  And Reed seemed determined to please her, too, with a cooked breakfast for them both on the table by the time she had showered and dressed in the pale yellow cotton top and matching shorts that were what Reed had assured her would be appropriate wear for the day.

  ‘I think my appetite just took a different turn.’ He looked at her admiringly. ‘For such a little thing you have the most incredibly long legs,’ he murmured, his gaze warm.

  All the better to chase you with, she felt like returning, but managed to stop herself. It seemed to be OK for him to flirt with her, in fact he was enjoying himself, but she didn’t think he would appreciate her doing the same to him. ‘Breakfast looks lovely,’ she smiled, sitting down at the table.

  ‘Your button is undone.’ Reed reached across to the large button on one shoulder of the loose blouse, his fingers lingering on the silken flesh beneath. ‘You look lovely, Darcy,’ he told her gruffly. ‘Like a sunflower.’

  ‘Thanks—I think,’ she added uncertainly. Were sunflowers lovely? They were certainly bright, but surely a little gaudy?

  He squeezed her shoulder before fastening the button with deft movements. ‘Don’t think, eat your breakfast,’ he advised. ‘You’re going to need it!’

  It was a warning that proved to be all too true. Busch Gardens turned out to be anything but the sedate gardens with walks down tree-sheltered pathways that she had been expecting. Also called The Dark Continent, it was exactly that, in miniature. After going through the entrance they walked into what could have been part of Morocco, with its street merchants, snake charmers and belly dancers. Darcy had to drag Reed away from watching the latter!

  It was all there, hundreds of wild animals roaming free as the steam-train chugged through their midst, even yellow and white
Bengal tigers in the Congo area. It was hard to believe they were still in Florida!

  It was a fun day, a day completely out of time as she and Reed joined in with all the other people enjoying themselves, Darcy laughing uproariously at Reed as they went on the raft down the Congo River rapids and he managed to get soaked from head to toe before they were half way down them, her laughter turning to a shocked scream as one of the jets of water stopping them from crashing into the side caught her full in the face and upper body.

  ‘The wet-look definitely looks better on you than it does on me,’ Reed murmured mockingly as he gazed unashamedly at the pointed thrust of her breasts against the clinging cotton material.

  Darcy wasn’t so sure of that once they had got off the raft and the full effect of his wet clothing could be seen, his denims clinging snugly to his hips and thighs, his shirt transparent, the dark hair on his chest clearly visible. She could barely drag her gaze away, longing to run her hands—

  ‘Thoughts like those aren’t fit for present company,’ said Reed, looking pointedly at the children milling about them.

  Delicate colour darkened her cheeks. ‘Neither was what you were thinking a few minutes ago,’ she returned primly.

  His mouth quirked. ‘How do you know what I was thinking?’

  She glared at him. ‘You—Oh my goodness, my contact lens just popped out!’ She closed her eyes in disbelief. The day had been going so well, too!

  ‘Don’t move,’ Reed advised forcefully. ‘I think I see it.’

  Darcy’s lids flew up as she felt his fingertips against her breast. ‘Reed—’

  ‘Found it!’ he exclaimed triumphantly.

  ‘You did?’ Her breath seemed to be constricted in her throat as she felt his fingers moving against her blouse, the flesh beneath springing into life, the hardened nipples pushing against the material.

  ‘Don’t just stand there looking at it, Darcy,’ Reed muttered as he held the contact lens out to her on the end of his finger, the two of them receiving several curious looks as people questioned the motives for Reed to be fondling her breast in such a public place. ‘Put the damned thing back in so we can get out of here and go have some dinner,’ he scowled fiercely.