Snapdragon (Love Conquers None Book 1)

by Kilby Blades

  She saw him the instant he exited the doors. No matter where he went, he was impossible to miss. He was under-dressed, having come from 80-degree weather, and she could see that his face had the beginnings of a light but healthy-looking tan. It contrasted interestingly against the effect that the cold was now having on his skin, which was turning pink in the Chicago weather.

  He smiled as he approached, a vision so singularly dazzling that she couldn’t help but smile in return. However little she understood things between them these days, the feeling he gave her never faded. He walked right up to her until they were standing close, their height difference exaggerated by the fact that he stood above her on the curb. For a moment, he looked down into her eyes, as if the past few weeks hadn’t been drawn with tension, as if she were one of his favorite things in the world. He tore his gaze away long enough to give her car an extended once-over.

  “Not what you expected?” she asked.

  “You said you had an old SUV—not a Range Rover from the year you were born.” He looked like he wanted to laugh.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m a simple girl, Michael.”

  “There is nothing simple about you.” He opened her driver side door and tucked her inside.

  The wedding was in Wisconsin, which was no surprise. Most well-to-do Chicago families had houses on Lake Geneva or some other Wisconsin lake. Darby’s family was no exception. She’d confirmed through her father’s assistant that the senator would not be staying there, and had the house opened up for she and Michael. The Silberstein home, where the wedding would be held, was right down the road. The estates were so large that they would still need to drive to the festivities.

  In good traffic, the ride up to the lake wouldn’t have taken more than two hours, but it was Friday midday, and traffic was heavy. Her car was so old that if they wanted to listen to music on their phones, they had to plug a headphone jack into a special tape that sat in her tape deck. The car had neither auxiliary plugins nor a CD player.

  “Put something on,” she commanded gently, handing him the adapter. He smirked as he took the ancient technology in his hands, but wisely kept his mouth shut.

  Darby had no idea how they would begin to approach all that had happened, but she couldn’t endure small talk or silence. Part of her wanted to spend the familiar drive with nothing but music between them. This journey held so many fond memories that she knew the drive itself would find her at ease by the time they arrived. Maybe it would be better that way—to talk in the one place her head had always felt clear.

  When they stopped for gas, Darby wasn’t surprised that Michael insisted on pumping. She also wasn’t surprised when he returned from the mini-mart laden with an arm full of sweets.

  He didn’t have the decency to look sheepish when she gave him a look as he opened the middle console and dropped his wares inside. She doubted if so much sugar had ever been in her car at once. Picking up a magazine he bought, Michael pretended to read. Her hand was on the key in the ignition, but she didn’t start it yet.

  “For real?”

  She couldn’t help herself. He smiled to before he looked up.

  “Don’t worry, cupcake. Some of them are for you.”

  Five minutes later, Michael was already digging into the console, and Darby tried not to notice his long beautiful fingers as they played at opening a bright orange packet of Reese’s Sticks. Thanks to Michael, she was already familiar with this addictive little candy. They were mini-versions of Nutty Bars, but tasted finer somehow. Secretly, she loved them. Pulling the first one out, he reached over to place it gently in her mouth. She threw him a look that was a cross between petulant and grateful—apparently her love for them wasn’t so secret after all.

  As they left the gas station, Michael switched from a magnificently mellow playlist to an even mellower Iron & Wine album he knew Darby loved. After polishing off the rest of the Reese’s Sticks, which he had savored slowly, he stowed the wrapper, shifted in his seat, and looked right at her.

  “So, when are you going to ask?”

  She didn’t answer right away, keeping her eyes trained on the road and her face deliberately neutral.

  “Do I really want to know?”

  “My investigator didn’t do anything too illegal,” he said a bit flippantly. “Huck, on the other hand…”

  Now he was just baiting her. But she knew they had to talk about it sooner or later. And they wouldn’t be at her house for another hour. Yet for some reason, it was hard for her to spit the question out. When she did speak, her voice sounded insecure, a tone she wasn’t used to hearing from herself.

  “What did you do, Michael?”

  Seeming to sense her discomfort, he straightened. His voice was softer when he finally spoke again.

  “Something wasn’t right. You’re a rising star with a spotless reputation and promising research. You had the potential to make Huck look good. The most logical thing for him to do was let you. He only stood to gain more status by making everyone believe he had groomed you. Even if he didn’t like you, distancing himself from someone like you was a move that no ambitious person would make.”

  Wow, she thought. Already, Michael’s logic was impressive.

  “He’s a smart guy, Darby. Not a good guy, but a smart one. When smart people do dumb things, there’s always something else at play. I thought about your theory, that he hates women, or anybody who’s not self-made. I thought through how that would play out if that were a pathological obsession. But we looked into that—his record with privileged women like you, and with self-made men like him, and there was no pattern, at least not according to the performance reviews of his other direct reports.”

  At that, her eyebrows shot up, and she took both eyes off the road for a solid moment to look at him. Michael plowed on, avoiding the topic of how he had gotten hold of the reviews.

  “It had to be something specific about you. So I considered everything it could have been. Was he a zealot who hated your father’s politics, so much that you became his target? Was he jealous of your work and afraid that you would surpass him professionally and expose him as an impostor? Was he in love with you and punishing you because you had rebuffed his advances in some way?”

  Darby balked. “No, thank God,” she muttered.

  “Maybe he was in love with someone else, and willing to sink you in order to benefit them.”

  He spoke those words meaningfully. Darby glanced at him once more, not understanding. She looked back at the road ahead. Then it hit her.

  “Yelena,” she said quietly.

  “They’d been sleeping together for months,” he confirmed. “That fact alone was enough to put him in jeopardy—anti-fraternization policies and all.”

  Darby turned off the radio then. All she wanted to hear was the rough hum of her engine, the gears turning in her own head. How could she have been so blind?

  “But I didn’t want to take a chance that he would only get a warning.” Michael continued. “So I dug up more dirt. If I could prove that he was not only sleeping with her, but also favoring her in some way there would be more of a case. And there was. Not only was he covering up her mistakes—of all people, he had chosen her to take over your research.”

  “And the exam?” she stammered, the pieces assembling themselves in her head.

  “There was no way to prove that he switched the results, but her track record was spotty. Yet, on her last test, miraculously, she only got one question wrong.”

  “Unbelievable.” Darby was floored.

  “By the time I figured it out, I had proof enough to get them both fired, but by then I had real concerns about Yelena. She wasn’t fit to treat patients. And anyone who would cover up incompetence like hers shouldn’t be allowed to practice either. I wanted to—”

  “—ruin his career,” Darby interrupted.

  Michael didn’t speak for a moment after that.

  “He’s a bad guy, Darby. The things he covered up for her…
people died on her watch—people who didn’t need to. I wondered what lengths he had gone to, to hide other things, at other hospitals. The list was long. He did all kinds of horrible shit that had nothing to do with you. By the end, I had so much on him that I didn’t even need to bring the situation with you into it. I doubt he’ll ever practice medicine in this country again.”

  Darby took a long breath. That last part was a huge relief.

  “I had a scathing dossier on him delivered to legal. It was full of things that spelled out a multi-million dollar liability for the hospital. It was obvious that an investigator was involved, but I made it look like it was something cooked up by the families of the patients who died. It came off as a veiled threat to press charges in a class-action lawsuit if the hospital didn’t settle. Yelena was all over it as well. Not only did the hospital fire them, they’re going to compensate the families. There is nothing for you to feel bad about—nothing for you to worry about. It’s over. You won.”

  “Vigilante justice…” Darby recalled Michael’s motivation correctly. Maybe he’d started out protecting Darby, but he’d taken it to another level.

  “And loyalty,” Michael said then, and she could feel more than see how intensely he was looking at her. “I don’t like it when people fuck with my friends.”

  In her peripheral vision she saw him turn to stare out the window. They sat like that, in silence, for a long time, with Darby staring out at the road in front of her, wishing futilely that she could see the look on his face. The familiar hum of tension that had infiltrated her body for the better part of the previous week came back in full force.

  “You ruined a man for me, Michael.”

  He didn’t answer right away, and she didn’t know whether he would. She glanced over at him briefly to find him unmoving.

  “He ruined himself,” Michael returned darkly, still staring out the window. “I just gave him his comeuppance.”

  Though there weren’t many things that Darby had liked about her childhood, she had loved the house on Lake Geneva. It had come down through her mother’s side of the family. When her father had been back in the city, doing whatever, or whomever, he was doing there, she and her mother had summered happily on the lake. Darby had scattered her mother’s ashes in the water, a few years before, but hadn’t been back since.

  As one of the older and larger mansions in the area, the house came complete with a tasteful stone exterior, shingled roofs, and classic charm. Inside were eight bedrooms, cozy spaces for lounging and living, and grand rooms for entertaining. Out back stood two jetties—Darby remembered which had docked their small boats versus which one she had dove off to swim.

  Darby noted that the house had been beautifully kept and she thought of the housekeeper’s son, George. Neither she nor her father visited often, but she knew that the Rubens still had something to do with the upkeep of the house. She couldn’t help but think of Michael’s mother as she recalled Roberta, who had been the head housekeeper. Roberta had been like a second mother to Darby, had died two years before her own, and Darby had cried nearly as hard at her funeral. Last she heard, George still lived in town, and she thought she ought to pay him a visit. It had been too long.

  “Memories?” Michael guessed correctly, coming up from behind to wrap her in his arms. It was the first real contact they’d had since she’d picked him up from the airport. She didn’t want to think about how much she had craved him while he was gone, not the sex, but this—his arms around her. Things felt right between them now. Things always felt right here.

  “Too many to count,” she replied, settling into his embrace. She didn’t know how long she had been staring out the window, her mind breathing warmth into the cold ground below. The shiver that ran through her had everything to do with being close to Michael. She wanted to turn and kiss him, but she didn’t.

  “You want to go sit out on the dock?” he asked.

  “No.” She turned into him so that he would hug her more thoroughly. The truth was that all of it—her being back, him being there—was overwhelming. He hugged her more tightly and she inhaled his scent. Even after twenty-one hours on airplanes, he emanated his comforting smell.

  It had begun to snow. The quiet of the house, the feeling of Michael’s arms, and the tranquility of being away from the city made Darby feel sleepy and calm. She hadn’t gotten much rest that week with so much on her mind. Though the house had been fully heated in preparation for their arrival, she looked wistfully toward the empty hearth, remembering so many hours spent in that house reading or writing in front of a roaring fire.

  “Why don’t I build us a fire?” Michael asked quietly. He was always so astute—always so tuned into her.

  “How about in the library? I’ll make cocoa. We can each curl up with a book.”

  Ten minutes later, Darby was snuggled up with a novel. Michael, however, was sketching. She’d seen the large drafting desk in his office before, but she’d never seen him sit at it. It was strange that, after so many months, she had never seen him draw. It took her mind to that unpleasant place that reminded her again of how much she still didn’t know about him.

  “What do you draw?” He looked up for a moment and smiled lightly, before returning his eyes to the paper. His hand never stopped moving.

  “Anything other than buildings. It helps me calm down when I’m amped up.”

  “Are you amped up about something?” Some part of her was already feeling bolder. If he wasn’t planning to share certain things, she was going to have to ask, and there was no better place to do it than there, where they were away from their everyday lives.

  “I’m under a lot of pressure at work,” he said vaguely. He’d alluded to as much that night in December when they’d fought, but neither of them had broached the subject since.

  She had known him long enough to know not to press the matter, that if he wanted to talk about it, he would. But today, conflict was written on his face. She suspected that part of him wanted to open up to her, but something stopped him. He was definitely the kind of man who did not like to show weakness. But she didn’t believe he was the kind of man who didn’t know how.

  This man had more emotional intelligence than nearly anyone she’d ever known. From the beginning, he had tapped into her deepest emotional needs with an exactitude that frightened her. She’d seen him work Stacey Kohl at the Christmas party, had seen him ward off Rich and manipulate Huck. He wasn’t an idiot. If he was shutting her out, he was doing it on purpose.

  So Darby trained her eyes back on her book, pretending to read 100 Years of Solitude. It was a book she had discovered at thirteen and still liked to revisit. But she couldn’t slip into the comfort of her old favorite; she felt agitated, even more so because she should be feeling relief.

  In her head, Darby broke it all down once again. Huck and Yelena were gone. She was the new Chief of Psych. And Michael, who had stood in solidarity with her for months, had made most of that possible. So why was she suddenly obsessed with knowing what he had sketched in that notebook, and so injured by the fact that he hadn’t invited her to see? He had handed her so many other things and he was so laid back in areas where other men could be defensive. But it was clear that the things he cared most about, he kept to himself.

  It hurt. And Darby had only herself to blame for that, because before she’d stopped to think how hard it would be to doctor the pain of reality, she’d been eager to nurse the fantasy. He’d never lied to her about it, either. What was it he’d said that night at the beach? That only his companionship was at play. Not his heart. But he was confusing the hell out of her, and in that moment part of her wished he’d been colder. At least then, the boundaries would have felt clear.

  So that afternoon, she let him zip her into the dark blue vintage evening gown that had been her mother’s, let him help her clasp her necklace, let him stop the hand that held her lipstick brush seconds before it touched her lips so that he could pull her in for a final naked kiss. She l
et him take her silence in stride, seeming, as always, to know intuitively know what it was she needed. What she didn’t let herself think about was why, if he knew her so well, he permitted her to keep up the ruse.

  “Darby! Honey…,” the voice came from behind her, the one she’d been dreading all night.

  Until that moment, Darby had managed to get over her disquiet long enough to let herself enjoy Michael’s company. She’d put on her game face two hours before and had allowed herself to have an otherwise pleasant time at the wedding reception. Michael knew how much she’d been dreading this event, more so now given her knowledge of possible tension about the South Side project, so he’d kept her laughing all night. He was obviously trying to distract her as he forced her to point out some of the more interesting guests and imploring her to gossip viciously about their scandals. She’d just told him about a Mrs. Cait Lawson, who, when she found out her husband was sleeping with her best friend, had extorted them both for millions. She’d gotten her ex-husband to agree to a divorce settlement that was very favorable to her in return for not letting out the skeletons in both of their closets. She’d taken the money and ruined them both anyway—her revenge was the town’s worst-kept secret.

  “Dad,” she said cordially, plastering a smile onto her face and allowing him to lean in to give her a hug. She gained wicked enjoyment from the split second he looked at her and saw her mother’s ghost. It was the macabre trick she played on him every time they met—she wore something of her mother’s. It caught him a bit off guard every single time.

  “This is my friend—”

  “Michael Blaine,” her father finished for her, and turned to extend his hand to Michael. “It’s a pleasure, son,” he said, shaking Michael’s hand in what would appear to an outsider as sincerity. But Darby knew better.