by Stacy Finz
“This place is awesome,” TJ said, looking up at the big wraparound porch.
“Right? It needs a good amount of work, though. And Reggie’s a packrat.”
“I want to peek in the window.”
Win grabbed his arm. “Are you crazy? Don’t press your luck.”
But TJ was already headed for the porch. Win hit his forehead with the heel of his hand and muttered an expletive. TJ jumped over the railing where the corner of the porch was windowless and crouched along the edge. Win watched from the river’s edge as his brother made it to a living room window, shielded his eyes, and peered inside. He crept around the entire porch and popped up where he started.
“The coast is clear.” He beckoned Win over.
“Are you sure?” Reggie could be napping in his bedroom. But it was odd that the dog hadn’t shown its face.
“Pretty sure. But if he comes out now we can just pretend we were about to knock on the door.”
“All right.” Win vaulted himself over the railing like TJ had and they walked around checking out the view from various vantage points.
“I’ll go in partners with you,” TJ said.
“You already have a house and I don’t want a partner.” Win pressed his face against the glass to get a better look at the kitchen.
“I don’t think you can afford it otherwise. Hell, this place is right on the river. The land alone is worth bucks. The cabin may need work but it’s got amazing bones. You’re looking at a big chunk of change here just to afford the mortgage payments.”
“I might have to settle for something else then.” Win wasn’t going to take money from TJ, just like he wouldn’t from his parents. He wanted to do this on his own.
TJ gazed out over the property, at the gardens and the grove of trees, and let out a whistle. “I’d sure like to have this in the Garner family. When Reggie gives you a price let’s see what we can work out. Maybe there’s a way to swing it. You’ve got savings, right?”
“Some.” Not as much as he probably should have in the bank, given his not unsubstantial salary and his low overhead. His studio apartment cost next to nothing. But over the years he’d frittered away a lot of cash on fancy outdoor gear and equipment, his Jeep, and some pretty extravagant vacations.
“With that and the bonus you get from bagging the FlashTag account—if you get it—we might be able to figure out a loan that would keep your monthly payments down.”
If anyone could pull it off, TJ could. He had a master’s degree in business from UC Berkeley and was the best wheeler-dealer Win knew.
“It’s a sweet property.” TJ went down the porch stairs, stepped back from the house so he could appraise it from a distance. “Needs a new roof. But it’s a hell of a cabin, really nice design. Solid.”
“Yep. Can we go now before someone thinks we’re breaking into the place?”
“Uh-huh.” TJ was distracted. Win could see the wheels in his head spinning. He was already figuring out a way to turn the place into Camp Garner.
“Come on.” Win kicked him in the ass. “Let’s go back the way we came.”
Ten minutes later, they were headed for the main road back to town.
“Where’s Deb?” Win asked to break the silence.
“Doing something with Hannah and Delaney. Probably wedding crap. You want to talk about what’s going on with you and Darcy?”
Win figured the question was the real reason TJ had come and he’d used the house as an excuse. “Nope.”
The cab of the truck filled with silence until TJ finally spoke. “I was a dick before.”
“You? Never.”
TJ slid him a sideways glance and his lips quirked. “You’ve gotta admit that your track record isn’t so hot and Darcy … well, I’m pretty damned fond of her, not to mention that she’s become an integral part of this company. Whatever that shit was you pulled with her mother …” He let out a breath. “It wasn’t like you. I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope you know what you’re doing.”
He didn’t have a fucking clue. “We’re friends, TJ.” Which was mostly true but there was more, too. He was a little bit crazy about her. Damned if he understood it but it was there, this desperate need to see her every morning and sleep with her every night.
“That’s the thing, Win. What you think is friendship, some women think is more.”
Win knew TJ was talking about his whole unfortunate situation with Deb. But it was Darcy who initiated the sexual part of their relationship, not him. “You’ve got to trust me on this.”
TJ turned down Main Street and instead of taking Win home, parked in one of the diagonal spots in front of Old Glory. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, because I know you don’t intentionally set out to hurt anyone. It’s not who you are but let’s just say you’re prone to a lot of misunderstandings and I just don’t want Darcy to get hurt.”
“You ever think I might be the one to get hurt?” Win didn’t wait for TJ to answer, just swung open his door and got out.
Chapter Seventeen
Darcy found Nana in her bedroom, looking peaked again. Her skin was ashy, her breathing shallow, and her bony hands were clutching the side of the dresser to hold her up.
She helped maneuver her to the bed to sit down. “What’s wrong, Nana?”
“I think your mother wore me out.” Nana wore a weary smile.
She was upset about Geneva and Max’s breakup, they both were. But Darcy’s mother had been gone for three days and until now Nana had been doing just fine.
“When was the last time you had a checkup?” Darcy shouldn’t have fabricated that doctor’s appointment to her mother. It was as if the universe was paying her back for being a liar.
“Not too long ago. I’m fine dear, just old and tired.”
Clearly, it was more than that. Her grandmother was having trouble breathing. “We have to go in, Nana. This isn’t normal.”
“All right but give me a few minutes to rest.” Hilde reached for the nightstand for leverage and seemed much frailer than she’d been when Darcy had left for work that morning. The fact that she wasn’t putting up a fuss about going to urgent care was also a red flag.
Seeing her like this scared Darcy to death. She wondered if she should call one of her parents. They’d never been much for helping in situations that didn’t involve them directly. But just this once she wished she had someone to turn to.
She found a pair of sneakers in Nana’s closet and socks in the drawer and sat on the floor to put them on her grandmother. Hilde was dressed but she liked to pad around the house in her slippers. Her skin felt clammy but it was a hot day.
“You want a glass of water, Nana?”
“That would be nice.” Her voice was thready and Darcy wondered whether she should call nine-one-one.
Darcy went to get her a drink and decided that she could get her grandmother to the emergency room at Sierra General faster than waiting for an ambulance to come.
“Have some of this.” She handed Nana the glass. “And then we’ll go, okay?”
Nana nodded and Darcy had a moment of panic, worried about how she’d even get her grandmother to the car. It wasn’t far and Nana wasn’t much larger than herself but she didn’t know if she had the strength to lift her if it came to that.
For a second she contemplated calling Win but she didn’t need to drag him into her problems. They were sleeping together, they weren’t a couple. And frankly she didn’t want him to think that she’d come to rely on him. It would just scare him off. Besides, she had this. She’d been taking care of herself for a long time.
She found Nana’s purse and grabbed her own. “You think you’re able to walk?”
Her grandmother gave another nod and Darcy helped her up off the bed. They walked slowly to the front door, stopping every few seconds so Hilde could rest. Darcy prayed she wasn’t making a mistake by not calling for emergency response. It was hard to know what to do in a situation like this.
They fina
lly made it to her car and Darcy helped Nana get in the front passenger seat and buckled her in.
“How you doing, Nana?”
“I’m hanging in there.” She patted Darcy’s arm. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Darcy’s throat clogged. The truth was she didn’t know what she’d do without Nana.
“I’m planning to break some traffic laws,” she joked because it was better than being consumed by fear.
Nana forced a weak smile and Darcy drove with the wind, making it to the hospital in record time. She pulled up to the entrance and waved down a security guard.
“We need help. My grandmother’s sick and I don’t think I can get her inside by myself.” During the ride, Hilde had complained of dizziness and Darcy didn’t want to risk having her fall.
The guard returned with a wheelchair and helped Darcy transfer her grandmother and get her inside. Luckily, despite a waiting room full of sick people, they took Hilde right away. Darcy assumed it was because of her age. She went to park the car and when she returned the nurse took her to her grandmother’s room, a tiny area partitioned by curtains with an exam table, to wait for the doctor.
“You’re doing great, Nana,” she said as one of the attendants assisted Darcy in getting her grandmother into a hospital gown and onto the table.
Another nurse came in to take Hilde’s vitals, typing Nana’s symptoms into a computer screen. Darcy had never been here before but for a country hospital, Sierra General seemed to have all the modern amenities. It even had decent paintings on the wall. Landscapes of the Sierra Nevada and a couple of Ansel Adams’s John Muir Trail reproductions. She tried to get lost in them but she was too preoccupied with her grandmother’s health and all the troubling possibilities.
A woman in a white coat and a stethoscope came in the room and introduced herself as Dr. Lee. A nurse followed and the small room grew tighter. Dr. Lee asked Darcy if she would mind waiting outside while she conducted her exam and told her that someone would call her back as soon as she finished.
To keep busy, Darcy went in search of coffee and wound up in a tidy cafeteria with more Ansel Adams reproductions on the wall. She fixed her coffee the way she liked it and went back to the waiting room where she fiddled with her phone to pass the time. There wasn’t anything from Win and she wondered if he was still on his mountain biking tour, though it was getting dark outside. Again, she contemplated contacting her parents but decided to wait for Nana’s prognosis.
A short time later, she heard her phone ding with a text. Hoping it was Win, she checked the messages. Nope, not Win, Lewis.
There seems to be a glitch with the files you
moved to the new program.Any way you can take
a look at it? I’m unable to access them.
Despite her better judgment, she’d stopped by the office Thursday while she’d been in Reno, shopping with Nana, and had transferred the data Lewis had asked her to move from one program to another. He really was an idiot when it came to anything technical. Glitch. Ha. He just didn’t know how to properly use the software.
She didn’t need a psychologist to tell her she was a facilitator. Part of the reason she’d left Lewis was because she no longer wanted to be his handmaiden. And here she was divorced and still at his beck and call. It needed to end. She just didn’t know how to stop being needed. That was the crux of the problem. She measured her self-worth by how much someone relied on her.
Slipping the phone back into her purse, she watched the clock and waited. At nearly eight o’clock a nurse came to the waiting room to get her.
“Dr. Lee will talk to you now.”
When she got to the examination room, Hilde seemed to have some of her color back, which Darcy took as a good sign.
“I’ve adjusted your grandmother’s blood-pressure medication and prescribed a diuretic I think will do the trick,” Dr. Lee said. “Otherwise, Mrs. Wallace’s tests came back normal. There are a few results we’re still waiting on from the lab but those will take a couple of days. By then we should know if she’s feeling better from the changes in her meds.”
“She was having trouble breathing.” As relieved as Darcy was she wanted to make sure they weren’t missing anything.
Dr. Lee nodded and smiled at Hilde. “Mrs. Wallace told me. That as well as the lightheadedness and fatigue could be from the hypertension. It’s a bit of a balancing act in someone your grandmother’s age. We want to get her systolic pressure down without driving her diastolic pressure too low.”
She’d lost Darcy. “And the adjustment in her medication will do that?”
“That’s what we’re hoping. I want her to see her regular physician but in the meantime the medication should give her some relief. She should watch her diet and exercise, even if it’s just walking around in her garden.” Dr. Lee glanced at Hilde. “Right, Mrs. Wallace?”
Hilde nodded and gave Darcy a reassuring wink.
“We can go home?” Darcy asked the doctor.
“You can go home. Make sure she gets plenty of fluids, especially in this heat.”
Darcy helped her grandmother button her blouse and pull the elastic waist of her khakis up and they made the twenty-minute drive home.
“Are you hungry, Nana?”
“I think we should skip dinner and have banana splits. What do you say?”
“Probably not the best idea. Remember what the doctor said about diet.” Darcy helped her grandmother out of the car. “How about soup?”
“You’re no fun.”
“Maybe not.” She laughed and together they walked into the house. Nana was sprier than when they’d come out and Darcy said a little prayer of thanks for the swift turnaround. “But if it’ll keep you healthy I’m willing to be a frightful bore.”
Hilde stopped in the kitchen and turned to Darcy. “You know, dear, I won’t live forever.”
“Don’t say that, Nana.” Because the thought of her grandmother leaving this earth was too much to take.
*
“Hey, I cruised by Hilde’s house last night to see if you wanted to go park somewhere and make out but the both of you were gone,” Win said, leaning against GA’s front counter.
“Shush.” Darcy darted a look around the hallway to make sure no one was lurking in a corner. It was early but TJ usually beat everyone in in the morning and he had big ears. “We had a small emergency and I had to take Nana to the hospital.”
Win went still. “Is she okay?”
“It was her blood pressure. But the doctor adjusted her medication and she’s doing a lot better.” Hilde had been in the kitchen making coffee before Darcy left for work, looking her old self again.
“I’m glad to hear it. Why didn’t you call me?”
She lifted her shoulders, trying to appear nonchalant. “I had it under control.”
Win leaned over the counter and held her gaze. “I’m sure you did but you still should’ve called me.”
“Why?”
The question seemed to stump him, but then suddenly a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Because you don’t need to do everything yourself. Learn to lean a little.” With that he strolled away.
She shuffled the papers in her hand, put them aside, and tried to focus on entering time cards into the database. After entering the same card three times she gave up and stomped down the hall to Win’s office. He was leaned back in his chair, throwing a Nerf ball through a toy basketball hoop. TJ had one too.
“I don’t do everything myself. And I lean plenty.” She rested her back against the doorjamb with her arms folded across her chest.
He stopped pitching the ball and looked at her. “Whatever you say. But you could’ve called me. That’s what boyfriends are for.”
She squinted her eyes at him because she didn’t trust him. Not one bit. Win didn’t do boyfriend. Still, a part of her dared to hope. Why was a whole other story. Maybe just for once she wanted the popular guy to like her. Or maybe, just maybe, she was crazy about
him and had been from the day she walked into Garner Adventure and he showed her where the supply cabinet was.
It wasn’t worth analyzing too closely. Win was probably suffering from a sugar high from too many doughnuts. Or he was just trying to add her to the list of women he’d slept with and dumped because the whole town knew there were legions of them.
“Get real, Win. We both know you’re not my boyfriend,” she said. “And after we snag this account we’re done sleeping together.” It was better that she made the rules before he dumped her and made her feel like a delusional fool.
“Why wait?” He lifted his brows and folded his arms over his chest. He was challenging her. “Because you like sleeping with me. You like me, Darcy, admit it. You want to be my girlfriend.”
She wanted to wipe that smug grin off his face. “Arrogant much?” But he’d nailed it, she did like sleeping with him. Too much. What she didn’t like was being made to feel like an idiot. Or a charity case. There was a part of her who believed Win was playing the boyfriend act because he felt sorry for her, like if he sprinkled enough attention on her she’d grow up to be big and strong. And he could pat himself on the back for giving her confidence and sending her out into the world a new woman. Maybe she was his project.
“I like it,” she admitted. “Anyone would after the drought I’ve been through. But don’t get too high and mighty. You and I”—she wagged her hand between them—“are strictly temporary. After FlashTag we go back to being friends and you can return to being the lothario of the Sierra Nevada.”
He snorted. “With that winning personality of yours I can’t imagine why you went through a drought.”
She noticed that he didn’t argue with her about being temporary. Good, as long as they were on the same page.
“We have to come up with an itinerary for this weekend,” she said.
“All right. I’ve got a rafting trip in thirty. Why don’t we do it tonight over dinner?”
She scrutinized him for a second, trying to figure out his game. He was being way too agreeable. “So you can change everything at the last minute?”
