What Are Friends For?

by Patricia McLinn

  All of which wouldn’t have been so bad if that best mind and its wallet hadn’t belonged to someone she hadn’t seen since graduation night. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if on that same night she hadn’t given her virginity to the guy in the backseat of his parents’ sedan.

  Which still wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t been wishing at the same time that he were losing his virginity to someone else.

  The someone else who had walked into the police station looking even better than she usually did.

  Now that was a bad shift.

  Darcie parked at the curb in front of the tidy white frame house with green shutters and got out, but left the door open, looking over the top of her car at Zeke. He’d pulled into the driveway and gotten out of his snazzy rental.

  “I’ll say good night,” she said.

  “Wait a minute. I’ve got something for you.”

  Not waiting for an answer, he turned, flipped the front seat down and bent in.

  She closed her car door softly so as not to disturb the neighborhood, and walked up the driveway.

  Zeke’s position pulled his jeans taut across his hard butt. Her palms tingled. She knew how hard because she’d felt it.

  Oh, only in passing, and at the time it had been totally businesslike. But she’d taught herself to mentally record everything that happened during a stop like tonight’s so she could replay details later, for reports and in court. The prosecutor loved her.

  At this moment, however, she wished she had an erase button on her memory—especially her tactile memory—because the tape of a certain few minutes was replaying entirely without her permission.

  His upper body was hidden from sight in the dimness of the car. Didn’t matter. The tape zoomed in on the broadness of his shoulders, on the line of muscle under her hand as she’d brought his arms together to clap on the handcuffs and on the way the V of his arms echoed the shape of his torso.

  He shifted and the porch light shaped and sculpted his butt almost as lovingly as— No. Think of something else. Like how he’d looked at Jennifer. Yeah, that was good.

  She knew she couldn’t blame Zeke. Despite all his brains, he was a man, and they were programmed so perfection like Jennifer’s short-circuited their wiring.

  Zeke slid one knee onto the car seat, emphasizing the muscles in his other thigh. She’d felt their ropey solidness when she’d patted him for weapons and checked his pockets.

  Oh, God, how sad was this? She was getting retroactively turned on.

  “How long is this going to take?” she asked.

  “Keep your pants on.”

  No. He hadn’t said that. He couldn’t have said it. At least he couldn’t have meant it. If he’d meant it that way, he would have said, Take off your pants.

  He hadn’t said Take off your dress graduation night. He hadn’t had to. After they had turned the front seat of his parents’ car into a hormonal sauna, all he’d had to say was, We could get in the back.

  It wasn’t even a question.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  She jumped at the warmth of a large hand cradling her elbow. He’d emerged from the car and she hadn’t even noticed.

  “What? Yeah. Fine. I’m fine.” She stepped back from his touch. “Tired. It’s been a long day.”

  “Okay. Well, I wanted to give you this.”

  She automatically took the thin square from him. “A CD?”

  “Thought you might be interested.”

  “Uh-huh, sure. Thanks.”

  His expression closed then. Oh, yeah, she remembered that patented Zeke Do Not Enter expression, and she felt like a jerk for her lack of enthusiasm. She cleared her throat. “As I said, it’s been a long day and a longer night, so—”

  “Sorry if you get in trouble over stopping me.”

  “I’m always in trouble with Chief Harnett.”

  “Yeah? It was, uh, an interesting way to see you again.”

  She manufactured a grin. “Got right past the awkward part, right?”

  He studied her before saying, “When I first heard your voice, I had this kind of—” he hesitated, as if searching for an unfamiliar word “—feeling.”

  Was that why he’d peered into the light toward her? “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “You didn’t seem to be in a listening mode.”

  “If you’d said you were Zeke, I would have been.”

  “I couldn’t know that until I knew you were you. And Drago was the last place I would have expected to find you.”

  Find her? Right. As if he’d ever looked.

  “Why? Drago’s my home. And yours.”

  His gaze shifted as if focused on a distant street lamp, his expression impossibly neutral, except for that old trick where his facial muscles seemed to turn as hard as the bones. Had she forgotten how quickly he could withdraw?

  “It is not my home,” was all he said.

  “Okay. You have a new address. Fine. This is still your hometown. You can’t change that. It’s still where you were raised and went to school.”

  “Anton!”

  In the instant before he turned toward the voice, his face softened—as much as that stony architecture ever softened. “Ma.”

  He took the two porch steps in one stride, and encircled the small woman who stood at the top. He towered over her so that all Darcie could see of her were her arms wrapped around him.

  Darcie could have stepped back into the dimness quietly, and been in her car and pulling away from the curb before either of them noticed.

  She’d done her duty, followed the chief’s orders to deposit Zeke at the front door of his childhood home and saw son and mother reunited. The shift from hell was finally over. She needed to go home, curl up with a book, maybe have a glass of wine…

  “Darcie? Ah, Darcie it is good to see you. You want tea?”

  Too late. She’d been spotted. “No, thank you, Mrs. Z, not tonight.”

  “You know my mother?” Zeke kept an arm around his mother while he faced Darcie.

  “Yes,” she said as if it were a defiant declaration. “Mrs. Z is one of the most generous sup—”

  “Oh! Anton!” His mother’s quick squeaks got his attention. “Darcie came to help me when the car—I told you—hit the fence. I remembered her from your class.”

  Darcie had been surprised when Mrs. Zeekowsky had immediately called her by name. Although not as astonished as Zeke appeared to be now.

  “How?” he asked, clearing up any doubt that he could have mentioned her to his mother back in high school.

  Mrs. Z chuckled. And didn’t answer directly. “Of course, I know Darcie. She’s a good girl.”

  Darcie felt her cheeks heat, which was stupid. Mrs. Z didn’t mean it that way, and even if she had… For heaven’s sake, she was thirty-four years old and being a good girl hadn’t been among her ambitions for a long, long time.

  “It’s great seeing you, Mrs. Z. Welcome home, Zeke.”

  She backed down the driveway while she spoke so she could give a final wave good-night and escape into her car.

  But as she drove away, she couldn’t escape the question: had she gotten out of there because she feared Mrs. Z might pick up on her thoughts about giving up her good girl status in the back of the Zeekowsky sedan all those years ago? Or because Zeke showed no sign that he remembered that event at all?

  Zeke crossed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

  How the hell had he ever slept in a bed this narrow?

  Of course he’d been narrower, too, then. So narrow he hadn’t had much trouble making love with Darcie in the back seat of his dad’s old Pontiac.

  His first time. Their first time, he’d realized afterward—and would have realized beforehand if he’d been thinking about it. But he hadn’t been thinking. Not with his head, anyway.

  Funny. All these years, and yet when he’d heard a voice ordering him to get out of his car with his hands up, his first reaction had been That’s Darc
ie. When she’d come closer, something else he couldn’t pin down had made him even more certain. But he’d told himself it couldn’t be. Darcie, a cop? In Drago?

  She looked good.

  Even in the harsh glare of the headlights, after she’d discovered who he was and stepped forward, she’d looked real good. It had been a jolt not to see her long hair at first, but he’d been relieved when they got to Village Hall to see she had it pinned up, not cut off.

  And the welcome home she’d given him…

  He chuckled into the silence. Handcuffs.

  She hadn’t been in a laughing mood tonight, but if she was still the Darcie he’d known, she would laugh about it before long.

  Was she the Darcie he’d known?

  A lot of years had passed, a lot of things had happened to him, that was for sure. That’s probably why he’d had that spur-of-the-moment urge to give her the CD with the pre-release version of Z-Zap. Just to show her what he did these days. But what about her? A lot of things could have happened to her, too. Lots of turning points, perhaps some even more memorable than making love together for the first time.

  He closed his eyes. A puff of memory vibrated his nerve endings. Pale, soft skin. Eyes as wide as the moon. A burning pain under his breastbone at the glint of tears trailing off smooth cheeks.

  He turned on his side.

  God, it really was silent. How could a house be so quiet?

  His own bedroom wasn’t usually this— And then it hit him. He got out of bed, set his laptop on the old desk and plugged it in.

  The faint light and soft hum brought instant familiarity. He climbed back into bed and fell asleep immediately.

  Darcie pounded up the stairs to her apartment over the garage, barged in the door—she really should lock it—and grabbed the phone on the fourth ring, barely beating the answering machine.

  It was Jennifer.

  “Are you okay? After last night?”

  “Last night?” Darcie repeated, stalling.

  She and Jennifer had talked about a lot these past several years, but not about Zeke Zeekowsky. Even while plotting to get Zeke here, Darcie hadn’t ventured into his feelings for Jennifer, or Darcie’s feelings for him. Simply because it was all so long ago. Last night had been an automatic reaction, like an amputee feeling a twitch in a leg that was long gone.

  “I thought the chief was unnecessarily rough on you.”

  “Oh, that was nothing.” Darcie switched the phone to the other ear, untied one shoelace and levered off the shoe, letting it thud to the floor in her tiny kitchen. “He was being restrained because we had an audience.”

  “Then I’m glad I decided to come,” Jennifer said. “When Corine called me and said Zeke was in town—” Ah, that explained how Jennifer had known Zeke was at the police station, but still left Darcie wondering how the younger set had found out. “I was too curious not to come.”

  Jennifer was being tactful, not mentioning Darcie putting the Lilac Festival Grand Marshal, Chief Judge and Guest of Honor in handcuffs.

  “Sorry, Jen.” Darcie set to work on the second shoe. “If this screws up our plans about Zeke, I’ll be really unhappy, but I would do it all over again.”

  “Oh, no—I didn’t mean—I absolutely agree, Darcie. With that monster out there with that little girl, you did the only thing you could do. And I could see last night that Zeke understood.”

  He did take it pretty well. Didn’t get all huffy and I’m An Important Person.

  “I called because Mildred wants to see the Patterson house again. I can’t take the schedule to Zeke this morning. You’ll have to do it.”

  Darcie closed her eyes and lied. “It’s okay. Sorry about Mildred.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” They both chuckled. With Drago’s economy somewhere south of depressed and as low person in the real estate office hierarchy, Jennifer got the worst tasks, including taking Mildred Magnus for viewings of a house everyone knew she had no intention of buying. “I’m disappointed. I hoped this would be a good opportunity to establish some rapport with Zeke.”

  “Rapport?” If Zeke had had any more rapport with Jennifer last night, the man would have been drooling. “I don’t think you need to worry about it, Jen. In fact, you should spearhead this thing. I know we said I would—”

  “It has to be you, Darcie. You’re his friend.”

  That was part of the plan. They would first ease him back into Drago life during the festival, with Darcie showing him the need in town and planting the idea that he and his foundation could do so much to help, because they hoped he’d be more receptive to those ideas from a friend. Then, when they felt he was ready—or if he never seemed ready, then just before he left—Jennifer, as the soothing presence and the better salesperson, would set out the specifics of the grant program they’d drafted.

  “A long time ago. Haven’t talked to the guy since graduation.” The early morning hours of the day after graduation, to be precise.

  “Judging from last night, you two picked up right where you left off,” Jennifer said. “You take the schedule over this morning. We want smooth sailing with the festival to soften him up for the kill.”

  Darcie had to force herself to join Jennifer’s chuckle. Even as she gave in, she was chewing over that sentence: Judging from last night, you two picked up right where you left off.

  That was the last thing she wanted.

  Zeke didn’t look as if he’d slept well. Good.

  But from the smell of it, he was eating just fine.

  After her knock on the front door was answered by a cheery “Come in!” Darcie followed that smell to the tiny, immaculate kitchen. There she found Mrs. Z bustling around and Zeke hunched over a stack of waffles that nearly obscured the postage-stamp-sized table against the wall.

  “Good morning, Darcie. How wonderful you come to see us this morning. You want tea?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Z. I’d love tea,” Darcie accepted quickly, trying to slide past the insinuations in the older woman’s smiling eyes over the word us. Remembering her hostess viewed tea as merely a vehicle to soothe her sweet tooth, she added, “But no honey, thank you.”

  Zeke frowned at her.

  “Where are you manners, Anton?” his mother scolded. “Say good morning to Darcie, and give her a chair.”

  Zeke didn’t move fast enough for his mother, because she swooped toward the table. Another chair—obviously hers—faced Zeke with a third chair at right angles to them. This one held a sleek, slightly dangerous looking laptop, which was Mrs. Z’s target.

  “No, Ma.” Zeke dropped his waffle-laden fork, twisted on the wire-backed chair that appeared ready to collapse, spread his hands protectively over the laptop and said, “If you touch it, the security alarm will go off.”

  “Tsk. Then you move it, Anton. And give Darcie waffles.”

  Darcie truly intended to turn down the offer—she’d have to run another five miles tonight to work them off—but Zeke heaved such a martyred sigh as he tapped several keys, closed the lid and took the laptop onto his lap that she changed her mind.

  She thanked Mrs. Z for a plate and fork, speared two waffles off Zeke’s stack and smile sweetly as she asked him to pass the strawberry preserves. He scowled. Possibly because she could have reached the jar of homemade sweetness herself, possibly because he didn’t want to share.

  Mrs. Z was muttering away about the crash of civilization brought on by people bringing machines to the breakfast table, and how Zeke’s father used to bring the newspaper to the table every day, but only to read interesting pieces to her. To bring a humming, whirring monster—no. Machines!

  “Ma, you’re using a machine to make the waffles,” Zeke said.

  Mrs. Z dismissed his irrefutable logic with a wave of the spatula she was using to scrape the batter bowl and a spate of her native language.

  “Ma?” Zeke interrupted. “Where’s the DVD player I sent you?”

  “Ah, it must be in the basement. I’ve no need for such things, Anto
n.”

  “And the VCR—the one I had somebody come and set up for you before the DVD player? The guy did come didn’t he?”

  “Yes, such a nice man. I tried to introduce him to my hair-dresser, but he had a fiancée.” She opened the waffle iron and with the tip of a knife flipped perfectly cooked squares onto a plate. “Not such a good girl for him, I fear. Too much she thought of the dancing, the parties.”

  “Ma. The VCR?”

  “I’ve no need for such a thing, either. There is not so much on that TV that I want to see that I need to store it up like a squirrel with nuts.”

  “Ma!”

  “Anton.” She stopped guiding the remaining batter into the waffle iron and raised the spatula in warning. “I cook or I answer question. One—you choose.”

  Darcie met Mrs. Z’s eyes, and her stomach sank. Oh, no. His mother hadn’t told him. All those times Darcie had asked, and Mrs. Z had assured her that Zeke was fine with it…

  “Ma—” he protested again.

  “One.”

  He flicked a look at Darcie and she saw the humor and love for his mother. “All right, Ma. Cook.”

  Any thought of opening her mouth evaporated. It was an issue between mother and son. It was not her place—or her responsibility—to interfere.

  “That’s good. I cook.” Mrs. Z smiled. A smile Darcie thought turned a little sly as the older woman dropped her gaze once more to the batter. “What do you and Darcie do together today, Anton?”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Z,” Darcie said quickly. “Zeke and I don’t have plans. I’m here to drop something off on my way to work.”

  Zeke stopped chewing. “What?”

  “Work? My job? Drago’s finest? Jennifer wanted to bring it over herself, but another obligation prevented that,” Darcie said, smiling brightly. She would not let her ego—over a high school crush, for crying out loud—interfere with Drago’s best interests. “She should be done by noon, so this afternoon—”

  “What did she want to bring over that you brought instead?” Zeke asked with impatient precision. She used to hate that tone.