Bad Bachelor

by Stefanie London

  “Talk to him,” Remi said. “At least get some closure.”

  “I’ve got all the closure I need.” She sucked in a breath. “It’s over.”

  She splashed some water on her face, despite Remi’s protest reminding her that her mascara was not waterproof, and then waited patiently while her friend cleaned up her makeup once more. The night would be coming to a close soon, and Darcy couldn’t leave before the final event because explaining that to her boss would be harder than trying to avoid Reed for another hour.

  The silent auction bid sheets had been gathered up, and the emcee was going through each lot and announcing the winners. Darcy remained off to the side of the room, her back pressed against the wall while her eyes darted around, ensuring Reed didn’t sneak up on her again.

  Her boss was mercifully busy at the station where guests were writing checks for their winning bids, schmoozing and making important connections and doing all the things Darcy sucked at. Reed shook hands with a silver-haired man who looked vaguely familiar.

  “Lot number thirteen, a one-of-a-kind earring and ring set by New York designer Rose Lawson…” The emcee paused. “Congratulations, Mrs. M. Sartori.”

  There was a small cheer from a woman who had so many rings on her fingers that Darcy was surprised she could raise her hands.

  “Lot number fourteen, a basket of exciting advanced reader copies from Gravity Books, including the much-anticipated next installment in the Melbourne Dark Magic series…”

  Darcy’s ears pricked up. Whoever had beat her paltry fifty-dollar bid would be very happy.

  “Congratulations to our event organizer, Reed McMahon.”

  Darcy snorted. Figures—something else she wanted was snatched out of her grasp by the man himself. She wandered into the crowd, noticing it had thinned out significantly in the last five minutes or so. She hadn’t worn a watch and the clutch she’d borrowed didn’t even fit her phone. It only had room for “essentials,” and apparently, that meant lipstick, not communication devices.

  “Congratulations, Darcy.” Her boss, Hannah, appeared in front of her. “This was an incredible success. So much so that we’re thinking we may do it annually. Although perhaps on a smaller scale, since we won’t always have the luxury of a free PR consultant.”

  “I’m glad it’s gone well.” The words sounded stiff. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Reed approaching. Shit. How could she get away discreetly?

  “It’s gone more than well, my dear.” Hannah winked. “This silent auction has been an even bigger moneymaker than the ticket sales.”

  “Fantastic,” she whispered. Reed was closing in, parting the crowd as he strode forward, eyes locked on her.

  “Ms. Fratelli.” He nodded at Hannah. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’d like to steal Darcy away if that’s all right.”

  So polite. Darcy wanted to roll her eyes at his smooth, panty-melting tone.

  “Of course.” Hannah waved him on with a slightly starstruck smile. “The emcee said we’re done with the announcements and the restaurant manager has assured me we can let people linger for a while longer. But the work is done, so if you two want to head off, feel free.”

  “Shall we?” Reed held his arm out.

  “No, we shall not,” Darcy said once Hannah was out of earshot. “Besides, don’t you have a prize to collect?”

  “It’s being delivered.”

  “Of course. Wouldn’t want to dirty that perfect tuxedo by making you carry something.” She made a noise of disbelief in the back of her throat. “God forbid.”

  “Thanks, it is a nice tux, isn’t it?” He smirked.

  “Won’t you just go away?” She made a shooing motion and looked around for Annie and Remi. “I don’t want to speak to you.”

  “Can I at least give you a lift home?” he said. “I’ve got a driver, and it’ll be much more pleasant than a cab.”

  “I doubt that,” she said. “I’m going home with my friends anyway.”

  “Annie and Remi have already left.”

  Her mouth hung open. “Excuse me? What do you mean they already left?”

  “I bribed them.” He was totally unabashed. “I really want to speak to you, and I’m worried if we part ways tonight, I won’t have the opportunity again.”

  “So you paid my friends off?” She shut her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temple. “What the hell?”

  A few heads snapped in their direction, and she realized she’d yelled at him. Damn it, could she not control herself around him?

  “Please. I only want five minutes. Once it’s done, if you want to go home on your own, I will get the driver to take you. No questions asked.”

  She oscillated from wanting to slap him to wanting to throw her arms around him. When she’d confronted Ben, there hadn’t been so much as a protest from his lips about it being over.

  “Please,” he repeated, his hands finding hers. “I don’t like to beg, but I will absolutely do it if it’s necessary.”

  She pursed her lips, forcing her brain to stay in charge of her body because her heart wanted to melt like Frosty on a summer day.

  “So beg.”

  He dropped down to one knee right there in front of everyone, a blasted smirk on his face, before she yanked him back up to standing.

  “Jesus, Reed,” she hissed, dragging him toward the function room’s exit. “It looked like you were about to propose. Are you trying to start rumors?”

  “You told me to beg.”

  They headed into a pocket of space between the function room and the restaurant, which was semiprivate thanks to a few large potted plants. People came in and out, but no one noticed them.

  “You have thirty seconds and then I’m leaving,” she said. “If you try to follow me, I swear to God I will kick you in your—”

  Reed cleared his throat, interrupting her as an elderly lady walked past, her eyes wide as she placed a hand over her mouth. “Mind the company, Darcy.”

  “Sorry,” her voice dripped with sarcasm. “You see I’m so used to living on a pig farm that I talk like that all the time. You can’t expect me to know the rules of your elite society.”

  “I deserved that.” He bobbed his head. “You have every right to hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, because that would require me to have feelings for you,” she lied. “And I don’t.”

  If only that were true.

  Unfortunately, she hadn’t listened to her head. Instead, she’d fallen so hard for Reed McMahon that her entire body lit up whenever she laid eyes on him. And even after all that’d happened, she wanted nothing more than to melt into a puddle at his feet…just like she’d promised herself she wouldn’t.

  He can’t mean anything to you because you don’t mean anything to him.

  * * *

  Reed waited for the sting of Darcy’s words to pierce his skin. But looking at her—her electric eyes bloodshot and watery, her chest rising and falling with shaky breath—he knew it wasn’t true. She’d tried to tell him that afternoon in his office the one thing he wasn’t ready to hear.

  She cared about him as much as he cared about her.

  They had this strange bond, built when neither of them was looking. On paper, they should have nothing in common. Yet when he was with her, he lost the sharp edges and rough exterior that normally drove people away. He lost the lens of cynicism that he’d looked through since his mom left.

  With Darcy, he was a better man—the man he realized he wanted to be.

  “Okay.” He nodded, his mind racing for how best to handle this situation. But that was the thing with Darcy—she didn’t respond well to being handled. “I still want to apologize for what I said. It was cruel and dishonest.”

  “It wasn’t dishonest.” She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You’re right. I don’t belong
with a guy like you. I won’t be a yes-woman whose only goal is to look pretty.”

  “That’s not what I want.”

  “You’re welcome to waste your next fifteen seconds telling me how you were wrong and how you really want to get in my pants again,” she scoffed. “But I’m not buying it.”

  “Fine. How about I use that time to tell you why I hate libraries?”

  Curiosity skittered over her face, but then she blinked and her mask was back in place. “Fourteen seconds…thirteen seconds.”

  “My mother was a librarian. She used to read to me every single night before bed.” The memory of his mother sitting on his bed, her red hair brushing his cheek as she read in her melodic voice, blew a hole in his chest.

  “Twelve seconds,” Darcy said, but her voice was less sure. Less prickly.

  “When she left, I failed English because I refused to read the books they assigned us. I got through the rest of high school by purely reading nonfiction or CliffsNotes, because it was the only type of book that didn’t remind me of her.” He sucked in a breath. “I hadn’t set foot in a library again until the day I came to see you for our first meeting.”

  “Then why did you want to help us?”

  “My assistant’s grandson loves your library. They go all the time and she came to me for help. At the start, it was purely because of wanting to help her.” He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

  “No wonder you seemed so cranky about it.”

  “But being there with you made me think about libraries differently. Hell, you made me think about everything differently.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’ve really never read a novel since you were fifteen?”

  “Not a single one.”

  “And yet you bid on a basketful of books tonight.” She shook her head. “What the hell?”

  “They’ll turn up at your apartment tomorrow morning.”

  She tried to maintain the annoyed look on her face, but her eyes softened. “You bought it for me?”

  “Cost me a pretty penny too. Someone kept trying to outbid me.” He huffed. “Too bad for him I was not going to let anyone else have that basket after I saw your name on the bid sheet.”

  “You can’t buy me, Reed. Not even with books.” Her hands dropped to her sides and she fiddled with her dress.

  God, she looked gorgeous. The floor-length slip was black with a floral pattern created out of reflective beads that glimmered like stars. A tight, black jacket covered her arms and back, the little points at the end of each sleeve giving her a subtle Victorian Goth look.

  But the thing that really got to him was the raw vulnerability in her face. The hope.

  It wasn’t what usually drew him. If anything, that kind of expression on anyone else would have sent him running for the hills because it smacked of expectation. But that was the only thing he’d realized this past week; he wanted her to expect things from him. And, more importantly, he wanted to deliver on everything she asked for.

  “I never let people get close to me because I’m afraid I’ll do something to drive them away,” he said. “For a long time I feared being abandoned. But I learned recently it was more a fear of being the reason for someone leaving.”

  “You think you’re responsible for your mother leaving?” she asked.

  “No, that was her and Dad.” He cleared his throat to try and loosen the tightness strangling his words. “But I made her stay away because I refused to take her calls. And whenever she did talk to me, I hurled all my anger at her.”

  “You were a kid,” she said softly.

  “I was. But I’m not now.” He sighed. “Just as my father is an adult making his own decisions, but I’ve been blaming my mother all this time.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I lied to you when you came to see me. You’re exactly the type of person I want in my life.” He plowed on, hoping she’d at least give him the chance to finish what he wanted to say. Because he needed her to know he regretted it more with each day that passed. “I pushed you away because I was terrified if I didn’t do it now, then I’d do it in the future when it would hurt more.”

  She shook her head. “You’re just saying that…”

  “It’s true. And what scares me more is how much you know me. I’ve shown you more of my life than any other person I’ve ever met.”

  Her eyes were wide, full of emotion. “Why?”

  “You’re the one person in the world who makes me think it is okay to let someone in.” God, he was bumbling his way through this. Every day at work, he crafted these perfect messages, and now he couldn’t seem to get one sentence out without being terrified he was going to blow it with her. But he couldn’t feel embarrassed, because he meant it from the very depths of his soul. “I’ve buried myself in work because I could count on it. But I’m tired of living this shitty, half-assed existence where I come home to an empty house and keep everything bottled up. I’m a zombie, for crying out loud, and I’m fucking tired of it.”

  It wasn’t until he heard the echo that he realized he sounded like a wounded animal fighting for its last breath. But that’s how it felt with her—she was his last hope for something more. For something good.

  “What if you wake up one day and decide I’m not right for your life?”

  He reached out and this time she didn’t back away. When his palms smoothed over her shoulders, a ripple ran through her body and he tugged her to him. “That won’t happen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’ll be our life.” He rested his forehead against hers. “You and me, starting from scratch. Baggage and all.”

  “Okay,” she whispered, a smile dancing on her lips. “You might need to send a trailer. I’ve got a lot of baggage to bring with me.”

  “I’ll help you carry it.” His lips grazed hers. “Bring all your books too. I’ve got some catching up to do.”

  “I have the perfect one.” She grinned, and the sight of that uninhibited smile warmed him from the inside out. “It’s a history of manners and etiquette.”

  “I’ll read anything you want.” He lowered his head to hers and captured her mouth with a kiss that held the weight of his hope. “I have a good feeling about this, Darcy.”

  “Me too.” Her teeth dented her lower lip in a smile that was so sexy and sweet he thought very seriously about hiding them both behind one of the potted plants so they could take it further. “I think I could love you, Reed McMahon.”

  “I think I could love you too.”

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  The Higher You Climb, the Harder You Fall

  The team at Bad Bachelors isn’t above admitting when we’re wrong. Self-awareness is hot, right?

  Former number one on our Bad Bachelors list, Reed McMahon, might be one of the rare cases when it takes the right woman to tame the bad boy. The man himself was spotted carrying a telltale little blue bag earlier this week, and our sources have confirmed that he’s popped the question to girlfriend Darcy Greer.

  Both parties declined to comment when our head writer reached out to them. But we wish them the best of luck on their pending nuptials, which are rumored to be happening rather quickly.

  On that success story, we wanted to take a moment to reiterate our policy with you all. It has come to our attention that some of the reviews on this site haven’t come from legitimate sources. Now, while we understand that a lot of passion comes up when talking about the dating jungle, we ask that you please only report on your actual experiences.

  With love,

  Your Dating Information Warrior

  Helping the single women of New York since 2018

  Darcy shook her head, snapped her laptop shut, and placed it on the coffee table. “Can you believe this article? Of course I freaking de
clined to comment. Goddamn Annie.”

  “I’m glad she told you,” Reed said, pulling her back against his chest. “Though I’m guessing you’ve been sworn to secrecy.”

  “She wanted me to sign a nondisclosure agreement.” Darcy snorted. She snuggled back against him, relishing the soft groan when her butt rubbed between his legs. “I said I would if that’s what she really wants, but she knows she can trust me.”

  Reed nipped at her neck. “You are very trustworthy.”

  “I wish she would have agreed to tell Remi as well. I hate keeping her out of the loop. But she said the more people who know, the bigger the risk her identity will get out.” Her voice was solemn. “I guess people do crazy things when they’ve been hurt.”

  She turned in his lap, looking up into his thoughtful, dark eyes and running her hand along the scratchy stubble coating his jaw. The last three months had been an interesting time. Reed had met with the other partners at Bath and Weston not long after the library fundraiser, and they’d made the mutual decision that it was time for him to try something different. So he’d accepted an opportunity to speak to communication studies students at Pace University on reputation and the media. To his complete surprise, he’d absolutely loved it—the students’ enthusiasm and energy had given him back an excitement for his work. So when a part-time lecturing position became available, he’d jumped on it.

  Darcy stifled a smile. Her big, bad, suited bachelor had turned out to be a wonderful teacher, and the students were rubbing off on him too. These days, he seemed less cynical about the world. He’d even turn up at her library when he had an afternoon off just to say hello.

  When he’d popped the question a week ago, it’d been a surprise. They were still so early in their relationship. But a yes had burst forth from her mouth without hesitation. It was a testament to how right it felt. How right they felt.

  She glanced at the ring sparkling on her left hand as she cupped his face.

  “Getting distracted by the shiny rock again?” He chuckled and pressed a kiss into her palm. “I would never have taken you to be someone who fawned over a diamond.”