Snapdragon (Love Conquers None Book 1)

by Kilby Blades

  SNAPDRAGON

  Book 1 of 2 in the Love Conquers None Series

  Copyright © 2017 Kilby Blades

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental. This book fictionalizes medical situations, yet is not a source of real medical information or advice, and is not a substitute for medical consultation with a physician.

  Published by Luxe Press 2017

  For permission requests and other inquiries, the publisher can be reached at: info@luxepress.net.

  ISBN-10:0-9857983-4-3

  ISBN-13:978-0-9857983-4-5

  Cover Design: Jada D’Lee Designs

  Custom Formatting: Champagne Formats

  Cover Photography: Istockphoto.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I - The Arrangement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part II - Dating

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Part III - The Beginning of the End

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For the first Kilby, and for Dawn. We never stopped missing you.

  “CAN YOU HAND ME MY diaper bag, Darbs? I don’t think I can reach it.”

  Charlotte sat on the Chesterfield wearing nothing but Spanx and the frumpiest corset that Darby had ever seen. The pale pink garment looked like it was made of some sort of cotton material. It sported heavy utilitarian zippers, with a complex opening around the nipple that was designed to allow breast shield fixtures to fit through. An enormous yellow pump that she recognized as hospital grade sucked and wheezed rhythmically from where it sat, plugged in, on the floor. Darby could hear the faint sound of milk dripping into twin four ounce bottles that jutted out unnaturally from the contraption.

  “Which one is it?” Darby set down her champagne.

  She looked between the two stylish totes sitting near her feet.

  “Not the Petunia Picklebottom—the Storsak.”

  Darby looked back down at the bags. “Am I supposed to know the difference?”

  “It’s the one that looks like a Longchamp,” a heavily pregnant Jodi interjected as she waddled in from the other room. “The Petunia Picklebottom is the one that looks like a messenger bag.” She gave a pointed look to Charlotte before turning her chin toward Darby. “You’ve got to translate when you’re dealing with this one. She has no idea what any of this shit means.”

  Darby handed Charlotte the correct bag just as Jodi put her hand on the arm of the sofa to steady herself before sinking down with a groan. She was only thirty-six weeks along, but she looked like she’d have given her first born away if it meant the second one would come sooner.

  The sound of a toilet flushing got all three women’s attention, their eyes registering sympathy as they turned toward the sound. Iris was past her first trimester but the morning sickness was more like all day sickness and it showed no signs of letting up.

  “I remember that,” Charlotte commiserated, sharing a look with Jodi before flipping the pump off with her toes. She handled the milk bottles carefully as she extricated them from the apparatus and screwed the lids on tight. Only when the bottles were safe and sealed on the end table did she begin to fully disentangle herself. Pumping breast milk was a complex operation—one of many badges of motherhood that Darby didn’t envy.

  “Next time, I’m adopting,” Iris groused, looking wrung out as she walked back into the lounge area. Her up do was disheveled, her face was blotchy, and her eyes looked slightly dazed.

  “I know it’s hard.” Charlotte cast Iris an empathetic glance. “But experiencing pregnancy is part of being a woman. It’s a major rite of passage. This is God’s work you’re doing.”

  In order to stop an unfriendly retort from spilling from her mouth, Darby took a long gulp of champagne.

  Jodi patted the seat next to her as she cast a worried glance at Darby. “We got you some more Canada Dry, sweetie,” she said to Iris.

  “Thanks.” Iris sat down gingerly, taking a fresh hand towel from Charlotte’s pile.

  The small group of women had taken over the ladies’ lounge next to the ballroom of a South Florida hotel, one posh enough to accommodate their needs. They’d brought hand towels for Charlotte, cool compresses for Jodi’s swollen feet, ginger ale for Iris and two ice buckets full of champagne. They’d even brought a tray of canapés, but the smell of smoked salmon and caviar was what had set Iris off. Sounds from the wedding reception could be heard from far down the hall, but Darby and her friends were content to have their own little party right there.

  Recognizing herself for what she was—the only fully-mobile member of her party—Darby had seen to the needs of her friends. She’d kept the champagne flowing—everyone except for Iris was drinking—and she was having a good time catching up.

  As the lone singleton among her group of old friends, Darby was used to the baby talk. By then, she’d surrendered to the idea that debates about sleep training and attachment parenting would play into many conversations. She had learned to anticipate the way these rare reunions had her feeling out of place.

  When her friends had begun to marry, Darby hadn’t minded admiring engagement rings with FL clarity, or bearing the mild insult of repeated insistence that life was so much better in the suburbs, and she didn’t mind cooing over videos of fat-cheeked infants now. She’d quieted her judgments about how quickly so many of her friends had given up promising careers, and learned to ignore the disinterest in their expressions when she began to talk about hers. But even Darby had her limit. Dear God, if she had to endure one more heated debate about a Montessori vs. Waldorf school, someone was going to end up with a Sophie Giraffe shoved up her ass.

  “What in the ever-loving fuck is this?”

  Darby had just set down a fresh glass of champagn
e for Charlotte when she saw the small white box that had appeared on the end table next to the milk.

  “What?” Charlotte didn’t look from where her attention was focused—on rummaging through her diaper bag—but Darby picked up the box. She read from it aloud.

  “Milkscreen for breastfeeding. Detects alcohol in breast milk?”

  She looked around the room in alarm.

  Charlotte finally looked up. “If you’ve had too much to drink, you do a pump and dump. It’s the path of responsible moms.”

  “Girls,” Darby said matter-of-factly. “You know when our own moms were pregnant and nursing, they drank and smoked, right? Like, a lot.”

  “It was the seventies,” Jodi laughed cheekily, taking a sip of her champagne. “Our moms did a lot of stuff.”

  Charlotte shot Jodi withering glare, looking between Jodi’s protruding stomach and her glass. Jodi pinned her with an unrepentant look. “What? I’m at the end of my third trimester.”

  “This product is obviously designed to capitalize on parents’ fears.” Darby ignored their exchange. “They’ve done studies on this. In France, Australia, and other cultures where moms drink during pregnancy and breastfeeding, light drinking shows very few effects.”

  Charlotte cast her a pitying look. “You’ll understand when you’re a mother, Darby.”

  And there it was. She’d been waiting for it. Iris and Jodi never pressured her about her status, but Charlotte was always digging in.

  “What makes you think I want to be a mother?”

  She finally set the box down and picked her champagne back up.

  “Don’t you?” Charlotte was genuinely shocked.

  Darby sat back down in her seat.

  “Frankly, no.”

  And miss out on all this awesomeness?

  “Most women do,” Charlotte argued.

  Ever the scientist, Darby wanted proof. “What are you basing that on?”

  “History,” Charlotte insisted. “Even in cultures in which monogamy isn’t valued, childbearing is.”

  “History’s been pretty shitty to women,” Darby said evenly, taking a sip of her drink. “Forced marriages, non-consensual sex between husbands and wives…that’s still going on in a lot of places.

  “So just because women didn’t always have children on their own terms…are you saying that having children wouldn’t have been their choice?”

  “Not for some of them.” Charlotte raised skeptical eyebrows, but Darby stood her ground. “Don’t look at me like that. We’ve evolved. We’ve stopped pressuring gay people into straight, childbearing marriages. We have access to birth control. We get to choose. And a lot of us don’t choose that.”

  “Alright…” Charlotte nearly pouted. “Tell me you at least want to get married. I think you could be really happy with the right guy.”

  Charlotte, who had the exact life that she had always envisioned for herself, was practically oozing what she felt was justified concern for her old friend.

  “Oh my God, Char. Leave the woman alone!” Jodi finally interjected, her playful wit disarming any tension.

  She turned to Darby. “Nobody’s judging you, Darbs. And if we were, we wouldn’t have a right to.” Jodi paused to look briefly and pointedly at Charlotte. “We sit at home on our fat asses every night, watching Netflix and folding laundry, and having bad sex every once in a blue moon with stretched out post-baby vag.”

  Iris chuckled a bit and shared an affirming look with Jodi. “It’s like throwing a hot dog down a hallway.”

  Jodi nodded her agreement. “Meanwhile, Darby still looks young and gorgeous, fucks whoever she wants, and has tight pussy sex.”

  They all laughed at that, all irritation forgotten. Darby rarely saw these women, and it felt good to get together like this. Back home in Chicago, she didn’t have many friends. But she knew things would be different if she had to take them in larger doses. They’d each grown into new people since high school and their differences as adults were hard to ignore.

  “You know I’m the same age as all of you, right?”

  “You don’t look it,” Charlotte admitted ruefully. “Your face has the youthful glow of someone who’s actually getting sleep.”

  Mention of sleep led to a conversation about how many hours of cartoons it was okay to let your kids watch first thing in the morning when you wanted a few more winks. When it devolved into a debate over which show did a better job of addressing sibling rivalry—Daniel Tiger or Peppa Pig—Darby took that as her cue to leave.

  After she had slipped out of the ladies’ lounge, she dismissed the idea of returning to the wedding reception, content instead to retreat outdoors. She took pleasure in the warm air on the elegant marble patio and leaned against one of the cool walls encircling the grand ballroom. Darby liked old hotels, and beaches, and she enjoyed the blanket of stars twinkling brighter than they ever did in the city.

  She had missed the sounds of waves hitting the shore and luxuriated in the way that the ocean breeze gently stirred the ends of her long dark auburn hair and tickled her lips. It reminded her of similar evenings spent in the one place she’d always been happy—her family’s house on Lake Geneva.

  “You look like you’re having about as much fun as I am.”

  A smooth masculine voice broke Darby from her thoughts. She let her gaze drift away from the animated party going on inside. Even in low light, she could see that the man who’d appeared next to her was uniquely handsome, his full lips and strong jaw betraying an otherwise slender, heart-shaped face. His nose was uncommonly wide toward the middle, as if it had been broken at some point, but it flattered him.

  “Oh, much, much more…” Darby teased.

  Something about the sarcasm in his voice compelled her to answer more acerbically than she normally would to a total stranger.

  “What gave me away?” She angled herself toward him. Taking a better look, she saw that he was clean-shaven and tall with a swimmer’s build, a buzz cut that hinted at nearly-black hair, and some of the most striking dark blue eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Staying as far away as physically possible from the wedding party is usually a clue.”

  A smile hinted at the corner of his mouth. The combination of full lips and slight laugh lines that would surely improve with age elevated his status from striking to outright sexy. The world was full of beautiful men, but it wasn’t every day she came face to face with one this good-looking.

  “So I guess that’s what you’re doing out here?”

  He nodded slightly, as if to admit he was just as guilty. Darby took a hearty swig of her champagne and for a moment they both looked back toward the party.

  “Are you like this at all weddings or is there something about this one in particular?”

  His question drew her gaze back to his, and she was glad to have an excuse to look at him again.

  “All weddings. Though, I knew it was time to get some air when my friend started needling me about when I was going to meet a guy, buy a house with a white picket fence, and have two point five kids.”

  He nodded in understanding. “I’ve been hassled about that before. Getting some air was the right call.”

  “She pulls the same shit on me every time,” Darby complained lightly. “I should have just said I had a boyfriend, or worn a decoy engagement ring. It would be a good excuse to buy myself a diamond.”

  The man weaved his head and let hesitation paint his features. “Yeah, but then you’d have to stage a fake wedding, dig up a fake fiancé, hire an actor to officiate…”

  She feigned regret. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  They both chuckled.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, I was just groped.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Groped?”

  “By a married woman, no less. She spent the first two courses with her hand on my knee, then my thigh, then…”

  Her mouth fell open. He nodded in grave confirmation. “And her husband was sitting right
there. I feel so…violated.” His eyes twinkled as she laughed.

  “You can’t go back in there. You know that, right?”

  “Well, if I can’t, neither can you.”

  Interesting.

  “Isn’t it rude to leave before the cake is cut?” Her protest was halfhearted.

  “Maybe we could go for a walk.”

  Five minutes later, they were descending to the beach via ancient stone steps that were carved into the cliff walls. It was dark. The steps were wide and steep and without a railing. Slight vertigo, plus the fact that she was wearing tall heels, had given Darby a moment of pause. But the stranger beside her gallantly allowed her to remain on the inside while offering a steady hand.

  A walk on the beach was the perfect antidote to a lackluster night. The humidity of south Florida made the air balmy, and the breeze coming off of the ocean put Darby even more at ease. As they floated down in companionable silence, the sound of their steps was muffled by the rushing water. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of this herself. She was used to seeing water every day, but Lake Michigan did not compare to the ocean.

  Before they had left the party to wander down the beach, her new friend had slipped back inside the ballroom just long enough to procure an unopened bottle of champagne and two flutes. He now opened the bottle and poured her a glass, just moments after they reached the beach and took off their shoes. He did it with practiced ease and raised his glass in a brief, silent toast, as if champagne walks on the beach with women he’d just met were something he did every day. As they began walking toward the water, it occurred to Darby that she knew nothing about the handsome stranger next to her.

  “So do you have a name?”

  “Michael Blaine, 31. Born and raised in Chicago. Architect with Dewey and Rowe. I have a twin sister, Bex, and a niece, Ella. When I’m not at work, which isn’t very often, I spend my time with them.”

  His voice was calm and honest.

  “You?”

  “Darby Christensen, 32. Also from Chicago. Psychiatrist at Northwestern Memorial. No siblings, but I do have a hermit crab named Consuela. My only other family is my dad, but I don’t see very much of him.”