by Ash Harlow
I was starting to agree with Darcy. Luther needed a girlfriend.
The drive home seemed to take forever, which was ridiculous because there was no traffic, and the distance was short. I slowed down past Darcy’s cottage, checking to see if any lights were on, but the place was in darkness which gave me a small sense of relief.
I found her in the sitting room. One lamp on. Music playing softly. She looked beautiful, sitting cross-legged on the floor, folding laundry. I took a moment to admire her easy suppleness and grace as she bent at the waist to reach for a sock to pair, then straightened again, twisting this way and that, putting things into piles.
“Hey,” I said.
“I’m still annoyed.”
“I know you are.” She was still beautiful, too.
“Do you have my laptop?”
“It’s gone to forensics.”
She paused folding a T-shirt. “So you think I’ve stolen the money?”
“Look at me, Darcy.” Her mouth was tight, and she looked tired. “We don’t for a minute think you stole the money. But the money was funneled through a bank account of yours in Australia. It’s not there anymore, either.”
“Jesus.” She dropped her head into her hands.
I got down on the floor beside her, and took her in my arms. “It’s okay. We’ll find out what’s going on, and we’ll get the money back. My priority is you. Not the money.”
“Rob,” she said. “I bet it’s Rob. He was always boasting about simple programs installed on a computer that could record keystrokes and stuff, to find out passwords. Or ways to remotely connect to a computer and run stuff in the background that most users would never be aware of.”
“There are a lot of ways to do this sort of thing.”
Darcy took a long breath. “You remember that night when you came to the cottage and Rob was there? Well, he was waiting for me inside the house when I came back from a walk. My laptop was open, and it was on. I recall thinking how odd that was because I hadn’t used it for more than an hour, but I wondered if we’d just bumped the table or something, and that had woken it. But, when I think about that now, it would still have needed the password…Rob must have hacked the password.”
“It’s okay. Luther’s a terrier, and he has terrier friends. They’ll track it down.”
She pushed to her feet and started gathering up piles of clothes. “I’m sorry, Oliver. If I’d used the Mac you gave me instead of my laptop, this would never have happened.”
“You’re not to blame. The way it sounds, if it was Rob, he would have found a way in no matter what device you used.”
“I don’t know how you can be so understanding.”
“Because I love you.”
She shook her head as if she didn’t believe me, and left the room.
I followed her and stood in the doorway of her dressing room watching her organize her clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going back to the cottage. I expect I have to stay in Waitapu until this situation with the missing money is figured out, and I’ll do that.”
“I want you to stay.”
“Are you crazy? After every piece of shit I’ve dragged into your life, you want me to stay? I’m trying to do the right thing here, Oliver. I’m being sued for a sum of money I’m going to be paying off for the rest of my life. You know this. I overheard Luther tell you. Not only that, I kept it a secret because…” She threw her hands in the air. “Look at me. Everything about me is sordid. Don’t get involved with me, Oliver. Please, don’t love me. It just makes it harder to go.”
I reached for her, but she stepped away, one hand over her mouth, the other outstretched to back me off.
“I can’t stop loving you. You, Darcy.
“You will. If not today, then next month when I’m still dealing with some new chaos from my life with Rob, because I don’t think I’m ever going to be free from that.”
“We can figure this out together—”
She dropped her hands. “It’s not your responsibility. If there’s one thing I can do right, that is deal with the consequences of every decision I’ve made. I decided to stay with Rob, and as a result, there’s all of this shit going down.”
“It’s a blip. It’ll be handled and over in no time.”
“Two million dollars is not a blip. And, here, wait let me show you this.”
Thirty-Nine
Darcy
The state I was in I no longer cared about hiding things from Oliver because I was losing so much more than my dignity. I was losing a man I truly loved, and the promise of a good life together full of mutual respect, where we loved and supported each other. I was losing a town that felt like home, and the friends I’d made here. But I was tired of hiding, of trying to fix things in the background so that they never made it to the foreground to be seen by the people I cared about.
I tugged the letter from the drawer where it had stayed hidden and unopened.
“This,” I said, tearing open the envelope. “This, I believe, is some sort of demand, or judgment, or whatever the hell they call it, to tell me exactly how much the insurance company is suing me for. When the house burned down, we were uninsured. I’m liable, because Rob made me sign the lease. I have no idea what it costs to build a new house, but it might as well be a billion dollars.”
I opened the envelope and scanned the letter looking for the figure I had to pay which probably had all kinds of things like legal fees and interest added to it by now. Without an obvious number leaping off the page at me, I slowed down and read it properly.
My hand dropped to my side. “I don’t understand…”
“What don’t you understand?” Oliver was smiling.
“They’ve dropped the case. I’m not being sued.”
Oliver nodded.
“You knew this?”
“I found out tonight. You can thank Luther.”
“Luther did this?” I was beginning to feel like an echo.
“I told you he was protective. When I gave you the contract, he insisted on running a background check on you. He does it to everyone. So, he discovered you were being sued. He hounded me to read the file, but I said I already knew everything I wanted to know about you. I trusted you, and I was sure that when you were ready, you’d tell me whatever it was Luther had discovered.”
“How did you trust me, after what Annabelle did to you?”
Oliver laughed. “Now you sound like Luther. The Annabelle situation was different. I was hurting after Rocco died. She was right there. She understood what I’d gone through. We clung to each other. Well, hers was fake-clinging, but I wasn’t in any sort of state to see what I was actually dealing with. I was still struggling, emotionally, when she started hinting at marriage. The idea made her so happy, and that happiness was contagious. It gave me something else to focus on so that I could lock away my grief. I’m not that person now, and I could see you were trying to pull your life back together and I wanted to support you without any pressure.”
I let him hold me because I was tired of trying to hold myself in one piece. His arms felt so good and safe, supporting me in my dressing room surrounded by small stacks of clothes waiting to be packed into a suitcase.
He kept talking as I let him hold me. “Annabelle doesn’t define women for me, nor relationships. She hasn’t shaped any cynical views of love and trust in me. She is simply a sad, manipulative person. They’re everywhere, but thankfully, not as prolific as nice people.”
“I still don’t understand how Luther managed to make them drop the case against me.”
“Nobody understands Luther.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “After Rob had paid you a visit, Luther decided he rather liked you. And once Luther likes you, he’s watching out for you. So, he dug deep, because, you know, there’s that terrier thing he’s got going on, and he discovered that although Rob made you sign the original rental lease, there’d been a new one drawn up when the property you rented was
sold. New landlord, new lease.”
“I was on an overseas trip. I remember. Rob signed it and he was really annoyed. He said household things like utility bills and leases were my responsibility, most likely because he never wanted to be liable for a cent.”
Oliver led me out of the dressing room and sat me on the bed. “Don’t move,” he said.
I felt so exhausted that the idea of doing anything more than sitting was impossible. Oliver returned to the dressing room and I could hear the sound of drawers opening and closing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“You’re not going anywhere so I’m putting your clothes away.”
I had no idea what I’d done to deserve Oliver. But I could just as easily wonder what I’d done to deserve somebody like Rob. Nothing. It was merely fate and timing. I flopped back on the bed and closed my eyes, and a moment later, Oliver was beside me.
“Getting dressed tomorrow will be like a scavenger hunt. Nothing will be where you expect it.”
“Thank you. I wasn’t being dramatic back there. I’m not one of those people who rushes for a suitcase at the first sign of trouble.”
“I get that,” Oliver said. “Are you hungry?”
“Sleepy. Fucking knackered, if I might borrow from Luther’s vernacular. Everything inside me seems to have shuddered to a halt. I think my batteries have gone flat.”
The bath had become a ritual that fit every mood, and Oliver prepared one with all of his special attention to detail. Candles, relaxing bath salts, deep water at the perfect temperature and, most importantly, him. I lay back against his chest, cradled in the security of his awesome body. He washed me with casual care, then worked at the knots in my shoulders and neck with strong, slippery fingers.
“Promise me you’re not a dream, Oliver. Not something I’ve manifested in a twilight zone, and I’m going to wake up and find myself alone in a filthy boarding house, scrubbing bathroom grout with a toothbrush.”
“Well, that’s what waits for you if you run back to Auckland, so you have to promise you’ll stay in Waitapu.”
“If Waitapu will have me, I’d like to stay.”
“Waitapu would love to have you. Almost as I much as me.”
“You’ve given me so much, Oliver. I only hope I can be just as good for you.”
His fingers slid from my shoulders, under my arms to my nipples. I groaned.
“Oh, look who just woke up?” he said.
I sighed, closed my eyes and indulgently gorged on the beautiful sensations Oliver stirred in my body. He played with my nipples until I was a squirming mess, grinding against his hard cock.
“Put me in you.” His words rumbled in his chest, followed by a satisfied groan as I adjusted my position and reached between my legs to take hold of him.
“Like this?” I asked, rubbing him back and forth along my slit.
“Inside,” he growled, jerking his hips when the head of his cock nestled against my entrance. We groaned in harmony as I lowered myself until he was buried deep inside me.
“I could fuck you this way until next month, Darcy.”
I tipped my head back, and kissed him.
“And then I’d spend the following month licking your pussy.”
“That sounds nice. What would happen after that? Would it be my turn? A month of sucking your cock.”
“Fuck, yeah. And then…” His fingers dug into my hips as he thrust inside me, sloshing water over the edge of the bathtub.
“And then?” I was that close to coming I could barely pull words out of my head.
“And then I’d fuck your ass.”
“For a month?”
“Sure. Hell, slow down a minute, I don’t want to come yet.”
“I’m not sure if I want you to do that.”
“Come?”
“No. Fuck my ass.”
“Is that an invitation?”
“You know it’s not what I meant, Oliver.”
“What did you mean?”
“I’m going to come.”
He was back to fucking me in long, steady strokes. One hand slid from my hip to the sweet spot between my legs. I didn’t need much more encouragement. My orgasm lurked behind the curtain, waiting for its cue from Oliver’s fingers. With one well-aimed flick, the curtain fell away and my orgasm exploded like loud applause.
Oliver continued thrusting hard, and came soon after, my name echoing around the bathroom.
Luther arrived the following morning while I was still in the shower. I met the men in the kitchen where they looked as though they were worshipping the coffee machine.
“Where the hell do you put the water?” Luther asked.
“I don’t know. I haven’t watched her properly,” Oliver replied.
“It’s a coffee machine, the water has to go somewhere. Pull that part off.”
“We’ve already done that.”
“Do it again. I can probably get the water in if I pour carefully.”
“Guys, hold up. The machine’s plumbed in,” I said, squeezing between them.
“You’re a lifesaver, Darcy. Mine’s black, double-shot,” Luther said, shifting away.
“Are you sure?” I asked. He looked even more jittery than usual.
“Yeah, I haven’t had any sleep, and I’ll collapse if I don’t get coffee soon.”
I started to prepare a normal coffee for him but Oliver nudged me. “Give him another shot.”
I cast a glance at Luther who was tapping away at his phone. “Is that wise?”
“It’s better than the fuss he’ll cause if it’s too weak.”
I made the coffees and Luther downed his in one hit, shuddered, and smiled. “You’re a star, Darcy.”
“You’re welcome. I believe I have something to thank you for.”
He smiled at me. A proper, warm, genuine smile and I could see in it the things that Ginger always saw. “Yeah, well, I’m not apologizing for doing that background check. Everybody gets one, especially after Annabelle. When I saw you were being sued by an insurance company, I decided to dig a little deeper. I love taking on those bastards. Yours was an easy fix. I was almost a little disappointed.”
“Well, I’m immensely grateful, as you can imagine.”
“Explain to Darcy where we are with the money,” Oliver said.
“Pretty sure it’s that ex of yours. The money’s still in a single account in Vanuatu.”
“Vanuatu? What was he going to do, holiday for the rest of his life?” Rob really wasn’t an island life kind of guy.
“Vanuatu isn’t the crazy choice it might sound. Its Finance Center is the ideal structure for money laundering, due to a lot of factors such as privacy, no foreign exchange regulations, and no reporting requirements in relation to the movement of funds. Dirty money is well protected by legislation which I won’t bore you with. I have contacts up there, and we look after one another. A few bribes, the right whispers, and the funds are frozen. It’s up to the police now, but we’ll have that money back soon.”
“You’re amazing, Luther. And, you have no idea how relieved I am.”
“We all are. And, Darcy, sorry to say, your computer’s fucked.”
I couldn’t stop laughing. “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”
“It’s got so many spyware programs on it, the thing asked for vodka when I switched it on. Anyway, that caffeine effect didn’t last long, I’m heading to bed.”
“I’ve never met anyone like him,” I said after Luther had left.
“I’m nuts about the guy, but two Luthers would be unimaginable, wouldn’t it?”
“You shouldn’t even be saying that out loud, Oliver.”
“Maybe not, but here’s something I still need to ask you, and I’m not leaving it another day. Come here.”
He lifted me onto the kitchen island. I was always amazed how he did that with such ease.
“You’re an amazing woman, Darcy Austen Kennedy. Your strength and courage astound me. You’ve made me ha
ppy and let me love you in ways I would never imagine were possible. Last night, when you made that ridiculous attempt to leave, I wasn’t scared. I knew I’d never let you go, and that we’d never be over. That made me see that carrying on without asking you this one thing was pointless. I spent the night making all these plans to surround my question with symbols of my love. To have the setting perfect, a beach, or a fabulous hotel, or something. To have a ring made by the best jeweler, with the most flawless stone. But this morning, I realized I didn’t want to wait another moment. So without any of the beautiful props I’d planned, in this kitchen, where we’ve had some of our best times doing simple things like making dinner together, or having mind-blowing sex on the counter…Darcy Austen Kennedy, will you marry me?”
Partway into his speech my cheeks were wet, and now I could feel the heat in my face, and the emotion thickening in my throat. I was nodding, because I wanted to speak without crying, but I also wanted him to know, right away, that yes, without any doubt, yes, I wanted to marry him, too.
His hands cupped my face, his thumbs rubbing away my tears.
“So many things, Oliver.” My voice was croaky, so I swallowed and began again. “So many things you’ve taught me. Love, and trust, and how to step beyond life’s difficulties because with the right person beside you, nothing is insurmountable. My heart is full of love and trust for you, and only you. Yes. Without hesitation, with all my love, I will marry you.”
Epilogue
Six Months Later
DARCY
“We’re going to be late, Darcy,” Oliver called.
I was staring in the mirror, trying to see if I appeared any different than how I looked yesterday. I tipped my head from side to side and did something resembling face yoga that exercised groups of muscles, but everything looked the same.
Same small sprinkling of freckles, same two eyes, nose just below, mouth with … hell, lipstick.
I stuffed the plastic stick into my bag and dug around for lipstick.
