Darcy and the Single Dad

by Stacy Connelly

  She handed him a cordless phone and disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen. Nick wasn’t sure if she was trying to give him privacy or she’d simply rather not be in the same room with him. Sighing, he dialed his brother’s number. His brother Drew’s number. Sam would have been the logical choice, but logic wasn’t running real high at the moment. His call went through to voice mail, though, giving Nick little choice but to call Sam who also asked him to leave a message and told him he’d call back later.

  Swearing beneath his breath, Nick disconnected the call. After his brothers, his soon to be brother-in-law would be Nick’s next choice, but Jake had taken Sophia to L.A. to introduce her to his mother and stepfather. His parents would have gone to bed hours ago, and he’d hate to get them out of bed at this time of night.

  “You could always call a cab.”

  The helpful suggestion came from the kitchen, letting Nick know Darcy had picked up on his frustration even though he hadn’t said a word. “Clearville doesn’t have a cab company.”

  “That was a joke, Doc.” Framed by the doorway, Darcy crossed her arms over her chest. Backlit by the light from the kitchen, her red hair shimmered with an ethereal, almost halo effect. But the gleam in her green eyes was anything but angelic as she added, “You probably won’t find this funny, either, but you’re welcome to spend the night.”

  Spend the night with Darcy Dawson.

  Proving he was at least smart enough not to make the same mistake twice, Nick didn’t assume she was offering him anything more than a place to crash. But even the thought of sleeping under the same roof, with Darcy only a room away, seemed far too dangerous. It had been a long time, way too long, since Nick had spent the night with a beautiful, desirable woman. If he had any other choice—

  Looking down at the phone still in his hand, he said, “My daughter’s spending the night at a friend’s. I need to let her know how to reach me.”

  At his words, Darcy seemed to unbend a little, far more so than she’d done at his admittedly lame apology. “Of course,” she said as she backed out of the doorway, leaving him to make the call in private.

  Dialing the Martins’ number from memory, he immediately apologized when MaryAnne answered. “Hey, MaryAnne, it’s Nick.”

  “Oh, Nick. Hi.” The woman sounded slightly surprised.

  “Sorry to call so late. I just wanted to let you know that my cell phone’s reception is down. I don’t like being out of touch in case Maddie needs me, so I wanted to give you a landline number. I’m...taking care of an emergency call.”

  “Oh, an emergency. Right. Of course.”

  It had to be his guilty conscience that made it seem like MaryAnne had stressed the word, almost as if she suspected he was lying. “Yeah. Anyway, I’ll, um, be at this number for the rest of the night.” He recited the number Darcy had given him and apologized again, saying, “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  MaryAnne laughed, sounding more like herself. “Don’t you know by now that the whole point of a sleepover is not sleeping?”

  Nick winced at the very idea of being surrounded by half-a-dozen preteen girls, amped up on sugar and a lack of sleep. “I owe you, big-time.”

  “Just remember that when Fluffy’s shots come due.”

  “You got it,” Nick promised. “Fluffy is on the house.”

  He ended the call while a movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention as Darcy stepped into the room, her arms full of sheets and pillows. Her brows rose in question as she padded barefoot across the scuffed hardwood floors and dumped everything on the couch. “Fluffy is on the house?”

  “The Martins’ cat,” he explained. The cross-eyed Siamese may well have been fluffy, but Nick had long thought the feline’s name should have been something even more appropriate like “Butch” or “Killer” or “Devil’s Spawn.” Still, he’d rather take on a dozen hissing, scratching fluff-balls than host a sleepover for his daughter and five of her friends.

  “Is there a lot of bartering done for work around here?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered, feeling defensive even though Darcy’s question had been more curious than amused. It was part of small-town living. Times were hard, and people helped out where they could. That sense of community, of neighbors lending a hand, made Clearville...well, Clearville. Despite the occasional downside of everyone knowing everyone else’s business, Nick had always appreciated how the town’s citizens looked out for their own.

  He waited, half expecting, half dreading another sexual innuendo comment. He could see one written in the sparkle of her green eyes, but maybe she’d decided to cut him some slack after all because she simply made up the couch. His gaze locked on every movement—how she bent at the waist and the pale pink material stretched across her perfect backside, how she reached to tuck the sheet behind the couch cushions and the strip of creamy skin peeked out above the hem of her sweatpants, how her hands smoothed over the soft cotton sheets...

  If he hadn’t been tongue-tied before, he certainly was now. The last thing he needed was to try to fend off another one of her teasing remarks. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t serious or that he deserved her giving him a hard time. Because even the harmless banter punched holes in the shoddy patchwork job he’d done when Carol had left, revealing the empty, aching hollow he’d been trying to hide—for Maddie’s sake, for his family’s, but mostly for his own almost desperate self-preservation. If no one knew how much Carol’s desertion had ripped away from him, then he didn’t have to admit it—not even to himself.

  He didn’t have what it took to laugh with a woman like Darcy anymore—if he ever had. That he shouldn’t want to flirt with her made no difference. Knowing he couldn’t, knowing he’d fail miserably, was what mattered. He’d end up seeing the same pity in her gaze as he’d seen in Carol’s when he had showed up in San Francisco with his offer to move there to keep their family together. The very thought threatened to fill the emptiness inside him with a sickening mix of humiliation and failure until the unfeeling void seemed like a blessing.

  So he was glad, really, that Darcy was giving him a break.

  But when she gave the floral pillow a final pat and turned to face him, Nick thought maybe he’d breathed a sigh of relief a little too soon.

  “So how do you decide fair compensation,” she asked, “for say—the local vet delivering four puppies?”

  Refusing to respond to her teasing, he quoted his normal rate for a house call even though it made him feel like an ass. The straight man who couldn’t bend enough to enjoy a joke.

  Darcy sighed and shook her head in disappointment, but that was still better than the pity he might have seen. “I was really hoping you might go for some soothing candles or a relaxation massage.”

  Yeah, right. Like the very idea of Darcy’s hands on him would be relaxing in the least. He could already feel the tension stretching to all points inside him, warning him that, at some time, his tightly leashed control was going to break. He could only hope he’d be far, far away from Darcy Dawson when it happened.

  “I’ll be sure to write you a check then,” she said, a little of her teasing fading away, and damned if he didn’t miss that spark in her eyes already. “I laid out a few things in the bath down the hall for you to get cleaned up,” she added with a nod at his still damp and slightly muddy clothes. “Sleep tight, Doc.”

  He thought he might have mumbled a good-night but was too busy escaping into the bathroom to stick around for a more formal response. He felt like she’d given him an out, and he was taking it. Shutting the door, he leaned back against the panel.

  Like the rest of the house, the bath showed its age with pale blue throughout—tub, tile, toilet and sink. He might not know Darcy well, but she was clearly a woman of style. A woman like Carol. His ex-wife had insisted he gut the entire interior of the first house they bought in Clearville, enlisting his brother Drew’s help behind Nick’s back when she thought he wasn’t working fast enough. And yes, Drew w
as a contractor and amazing at his job, but dammit, it was supposed to be their house—Carol’s and Nick’s. Not Carol’s and Nick’s and Drew’s, no matter how much he loved his brother.

  Shaking off the memories, Nick reached for the towel she’d left on the edge of the tub and a bundle of clothes fell to the blue and white mosaic floor. As he bent to pick them up, he found a T-shirt and sweats, but nothing like the pink feminine pair Darcy wore. The worn T-shirt was an extra large with the Trail Blazers emblem faded across the front, the pants slate gray and masculine.

  Nick’s hands fisted in the soft material. He could tell himself all he wanted that he didn’t care who or how many men Darcy had dated, but when he was faced with the proof, the truth hit like a blow to the gut. He cared too damn much.

  The last thing he wanted was to put on clothes left behind by some other guy. His own muddy clothes and, hell, even the bucket seat of his truck were looking better and better. With a muttered curse, he attacked the buttons on his shirt. He was making way too big of a deal out of something that could only amount to nothing.

  He changed as quickly as he could, as if—like taking medicine—the faster it went down, the easier it was to swallow. He hit the lights and made his way back to the living room. He breathed a sigh of relief that Darcy was nowhere to be seen, but her voice still rang in his ears as he crossed the room.

  Sleep tight, Doc.

  Pulling back the sheets tucked into the couch pillows, he lay down as if stretching out on a bed of nails. He closed his eyes tight as if that could somehow erase the sight, the sound, the—

  His eyes popped open as the faint promise of something citrusy and sweet drifted over him. Nick still didn’t know what it was that made Darcy smell like a summer’s day after a hard, cold winter, but enough of the scent clung to the softness of the sheets for him to feel like she was lying there beside him.

  His jaw clenched. It was going to be a long, long night.

  Chapter Four

  A normal woman, put in the position of having a strange man sleeping under her roof, might have been worried. Since Darcy was very much a “normal” woman, then the blame—or really, the credit—had to go to Nick. Who, although she didn’t know him well, wasn’t a strange man.

  He was one of the good guys.

  She’d expected as much after getting to know his sister, Sophia, who managed an antiques shop only a few doors down from the spot Darcy had rented. Sophia had recently moved back to her hometown with her fiancé, and the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman practically glowed with happiness. She’d admitted growing up in the small town hadn’t always been easy, but Clearville was home, and nothing was more important to the Pirellis than family.

  Even without Sophia’s words, Darcy had her own proof of that last night.

  She hadn’t intended to eavesdrop on Nick’s phone call, but she’d walked in during the middle of the conversation. The concern and thoughtfulness of calling to check on his daughter and to make sure the little girl could get in touch with him showed where his priorities lay. The thought of a soft-hearted father hidden behind the strong, unbending facade was almost enough to make Darcy’s own heart melt a little, though she tried hard not to let it show.

  Not when she already knew how Nick, and most likely the rest of the good guys in town, undoubtedly saw her.

  I’m not interested in a fling or an affair.

  As if that was all she was interested in.

  The truth was, Darcy had very much wanted to settle down, to get married and start a family. She thought she was well on her way when she had met Aaron. Only, as it turned out, he wanted to succeed in politics even more. When he feared she’d be more of a liability than an asset, he’d quickly gone out and found a woman more suitable for the picture-perfect family in his future.

  Though their breakup was for the best and she was lucky it had happened before the marriage and children she’d imagined, Darcy couldn’t pretend Aaron’s rejection hadn’t hurt. Hadn’t shaken her confidence.

  But it had also lifted the weight of expectation off her shoulders, and she’d felt free. Riding high on her decision to move to Clearville and pursue her mother’s dream, she’d been more than a little giddy. Like a kid who’d cast off training wheels, she’d let a little bit of that freedom go to her head and had taken her first few curves a little too fast. No surprise, really, that she’d already crashed.

  It had all seemed so harmless when the handyman she’d hired had flirted outrageously with her. Flattered by the attention, Darcy had made the mistake of agreeing to go out with Travis Parker.

  Throwing off the covers, she wished she could toss Travis’s memory aside as easily. The outdoor guide/part-time handyman was handsome, but his arrogance quickly stripped away any attraction Darcy might have felt. His cocky belief that saying yes to a third date with him was the same as saying yes to sex put an immediate end to their final evening together. Or so she’d thought.

  Only later did she realize she’d done more than bruise Travis’s knuckles when she slammed the front door shut on his hand. Not about to admit he hadn’t gotten over the threshold, let alone beyond first base, Travis had spread the story about Darcy being an easy city girl. At least, she was pretty sure that was where the rumor started. How much each of her subsequent dates added on to enhance their own reputations, she didn’t know.

  She told herself she didn’t care and might have even believed it—until Nick.

  Because, truthfully, he was right. She had been offering more than coffee. She’d been offering him the chance to stay, asking him to share a little longer the quiet intimacy they’d found sitting side by side on her laundry room floor, inviting him to relax, to laugh...

  And when he’d practically jumped out of his skin to get away from her— Yeah, that had hurt.

  But when he’d been forced to come back to her doorstep and ask for her help... Well, tossing his words back in his face had been the most fun she’d had with the opposite sex in quite some time. His embarrassment had gone a long way toward dousing her anger. And even though he hadn’t lightened up enough to respond, now and then she’d caught a hint of something inside him—an answering spark that told her he’d wanted to snap back, to have some fun, to flirt....

  But then the walls had come back up, as if he’d cut off the possibility.

  Because of her and the reputation she had? Or was it because of something in Nick’s past? Probably a combination of the two, but if she had to guess, she’d say those walls weren’t anything new. They were beaten and battle scarred from holding the world at bay for a long, long time, and she wondered when the last time was that Nick Pirelli had let anyone in.

  Taking a deep breath, she met her own gaze in the bathroom mirror. She’d taken far more pains than she normally would have on a Saturday morning in selecting a turquoise tunic belted over black leggings. It was a casual outfit, but a little dressier than needed when her plans for the day included unpacking more of the boxes arriving at her house on a daily basis and organizing what would soon be the inventory for her store. Not that Nick would be all that impressed with the way her silver-link belt matched her bracelet or with the way the blue-green color of her shirt brought out the emerald in her eyes.

  Even if she hadn’t misread the desire in his eyes last night as they crouched together next to the mama dog and her puppies, he had made his feelings more than clear. Trendy clothes weren’t going to change his mind. She wasn’t sure anything would, but she was determined to hold her head high and put her best foot—and fashionable sandal—forward, no matter what Nick thought of her.

  Decision made, Darcy snapped off the bathroom light. She headed down the hall toward the living room where she saw the sheets and clothes she had laid out for him the night before neatly folded on the arm of the couch. She hadn’t even realized she had brought along some of Aaron’s clothes until she’d started unpacking. Her plan was to donate the few items, but she hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  Darcy picked
up the T-shirt, waiting for the feeling of hurt and anger to swamp her like it usually did when she saw the reminders of her past. But the shirt no longer held the hint of Aaron’s cologne, but the simpler, more basic scent of soap and something far more complicated and less easily defined that smelled like...Nick.

  The unwanted memories didn’t come, almost as if Nick had somehow wiped away what no longer was with the possibility of what could be.

  Shaking off the fanciful thought, she dropped the clothes back on the couch. Expecting to find Nick checking on the dog, she walked into the kitchen, but it, too, was empty.

  Almost empty, she amended as her gaze landed on the mother dog happily nursing her babies in the small laundry area off the kitchen.

  Despite the overwhelming thought of five dogs in her house—five dogs—Darcy couldn’t help smiling. There was something so maternal about the act and something so undeniably sweet and helpless about the pups that she wondered if she may yet overcome her fears. Stepping closer, she toed the edge of the doorway.

  The water and food bowls were freshly filled. “I see someone checked on you before taking off at least.”

  Her own voice sounded loud in the empty kitchen, almost as if she were talking to herself and yet...not. With the dog’s upright ears and fascinating two-colored eyes, she could believe the animal understood every word she said.

  The dog cocked its head, almost as if sizing up the competition for the handsome vet’s attention, and Darcy wryly added, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, girl. He clearly likes you better than he likes me.”

  * * *

  Overcast skies lingered from the storm the night before, giving the whole world a grayish hue. Rain still dripped from the trees overhead and Darcy’s gravel drive had turned into a giant puddle. By late afternoon, the haze would likely burn off and the ground would start to dry, but Nick planned to be long gone by then.

  After suffering through the night, jerking in and out of dreams where he walked down the hall to Darcy’s bedroom and joined her on an endless bed of cloud-soft satin, he had little compunction about sneaking out at the break of dawn. He was tired, hungover from lack of sleep, and he knew damn well his resistance was at an all-time low. He was afraid if she made one teasing, sexy comment, she’d see in his hungry gaze every half-awake, half-asleep fantasy he’d had the night before.