by Jane Graves
“Nope,” John said. “If I’m buying, I get to pick.”
“So that’s why you offered to foot the bill? So you can tell me what to buy?”
“So I can show you how to get the most for your money. It’s a lesson you need to learn.”
Okay. Darcy had two choices here. She could throw herself on the mercy of a man to pick out her clothes, a man who wouldn’t know haute couture if Versace himself waved it around in front of him.
Or she could have nothing.
“What size do you wear?” John asked.
Darcy sighed with resignation. “Six.”
“Hmm,” he said as he flipped through the rack. “I’m not seeing many of those.”
“No kidding.”
He pulled a shirt off the rack and held it up. “Here you go.”
“That’s hideous.”
“It’s a perfectly good shirt.”
“For my great-grandmother.”
“What? You don’t like my taste?”
She let her gaze slither down his body and back up again, turning her nose up as if she’d gotten a whiff of dog poop. “Well, you’re not exactly GQ material.”
“Well, there’s that lifelong dream shot to hell.” He worked his way through a rack of Capri pants. “Well, now. Aren’t these nice?”
He grabbed a pair and held them up. They were pink. No, pink didn’t begin to describe the color of those pants.
“I can’t buy those,” Darcy said. “Somebody spilled Pepto-Bismol on them.”
“They’ll fade in the wash.”
“The stitching is crooked.”
“I’m not paying enough for it to be straight.”
“I hate pink. How about the white ones instead?”
“How about you try on what I give you?”
He shoved the Capris at her. He grabbed two more shirts and a pair of pants, then something off another rack that made Darcy cringe. Had broomstick skirts ever been in style?
“Would it be possible,” she said, “for you to place that lovely garment back on the rack? I don’t want to show up at the soup kitchen wearing the same clothes as another street person, now, do I?”
“Do I need to remind you who’s footing the bill?”
With a roll of her eyes, she took the clothes and headed for the dressing room.
“I want to see everything you try on,” he called out.
Oh, God. Not only did she have to put these awful clothes on, but she had to model them, too?
The counter in the dressing room was serviced by a woman approximately the size and shape of a troll doll, with fiercely frizzed red hair straight from a bottle of Nice ’n Easy. She wore a blue smock and a name badge that read “Twyla.”
“How many you got, honey?” she said.
This was beyond humiliating. Darcy was used to a saleswoman escorting her to a private fitting room, where she brought in the latest fashions for her scrutiny, along with a glass of Chardonnay and a deliciously subservient attitude. But here was this woman sorting through the clothes, counting every item to ensure Darcy didn’t shoplift.
Shoplift. Good God. If she were inclined to steal, wouldn’t she do it from a better place than this?
“You’ll like the Capri pants,” the old lady said. “Bought some of them myself.”
Darcy shuddered. This is just a bad dream, she told herself. You’ll wake up in a moment and it’ll all be over.
She put on the pink Capris and the blouse. They fit. Sort of. A puckered seam here, a crooked collar there. She walked out of the dressing room to find John leaning against a wall, his arms folded. He pushed away from the wall and took a step or two toward her, eyeing her critically, then held up his index finger and spun it around. She rolled her eyes and turned in a circle. He put his hand on his chin, narrowing his eyes.
“Not bad.”
“Yes, bad.”
“Those pants are definitely your color.”
“This isn’t anybody’s color. If you put a chameleon on them, the poor thing would commit suicide.”
“They should hold up pretty well in the wash.”
“I don’t wash. I dry clean.”
“Not on your salary, you don’t. We’ll take it. Go try on some more.”
She glared at him. “Doesn’t it embarrass you to hang around in a women’s clothing department?”
“I grew up with Amy in the house. Nothing embarrasses me where women are concerned.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Shall I go buy some tampons to prove it?”
Darcy had never met a more infuriatingly uncontrollable man in her life.
She headed back to the dressing room and put on another shirt and a pair of pants, which were wrong in every way possible, and trudged back out to where John stood.
“Looks good,” he said.
“As long as I’m heading to prison.”
“It’s perfect for work. Very utilitarian.”
With yet another roll of her eyes, she turned back to the dressing room. She went in and out several more times, adding whatever clothes to the pile John directed her to until she had approached the hundred-dollar mark.
“Hold on,” John said. “One more thing.”
He reached to a nearby rack in an adjoining department and held up one of the most hideous garments Darcy had ever seen: a hot-pink nightgown with feathers around the hem. It looked like a bad Valentine’s Day joke.
She stared at him dumbly. “You expect me to try that on?”
“It’s pink. Your favorite color. And it’s on sale. Seven ninety-nine. Hell of a bargain.”
“What happened to utilitarian?”
He gave her a provocative smile. “Some clothes are just for fun.”
She yanked it out of his hand and headed for the dressing room again.
“Now you be sure to let me know how it fits,” John said. “And details are appreciated.”
His smirk of amusement said he was getting a bang out of knocking her exquisite taste in clothing down a peg or two. And he was so smug about shopping in the women’s department that she couldn’t even embarrass him about that.
Darcy went into the dressing room, tossed the nightgown aside, and started to put her own clothes back on, only to stop short and stare at it again.
Maybe there was a way to knock that smug expression off his face after all.
She put on the nightgown. The hem came to the middle of her thighs, its feathers tickling her legs. It was cut low, but not criminally so, and she showed less skin wearing this than she did wearing a swimsuit. The only law enforcement entity that could legitimately arrest her for wearing this in public was the fashion police.
She opened the door to the dressing room and came slinking out. Fortunately Twyla had left her station to return clothes to racks, so there was nobody around to suggest to her that modeling this particular garment might be a bad idea. She caught sight of John in the electronics department across the aisle. He clearly thought their shopping expedition was over.
Not yet it wasn’t.
With a sway of her hips, she moved toward him. Along the way she caught the attention of a thirtysomething man carrying a garden hose and another one pushing a shopping cart containing two giant-sized bags of dog food. They stopped and stared openmouthed. As she drew closer to the electronics counter, the clerk behind it, a gangly young man with braces, looked up. When his eyes widened, John saw his expression and turned around. His jaw dropped.
“Darcy! What are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly to the other men. “I don’t mean to be such an exhibitionist.” She nodded toward John. “It’s my boyfriend. He told me if I didn’t model the clothes I wanted to buy for him, I couldn’t have them.” She pouted pitifully. “And I really, really want this pretty nightie.”
“What?” John said.
“I believe those were the instructions you gave me.”
“Regular clothes! Not lingerie!”
Dar
cy turned to the men and whispered, “Imagine what it’s like when I’m shopping for bras.”
“I can imagine that,” the clerk said.
“Me, too,” said another man.
“Planning on buying any today?” the third one said.
“That’s it!” John grabbed Darcy’s wrist and dragged her back to the dressing room. He shoved her into the first compartment he came to, followed her inside, and closed the door behind them.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She blinked innocently. “You told me you wanted to see everything I tried on.”
“I assumed you had common sense. Clearly that’s not the case.”
“So you don’t like it?” She ran her hands down the sides of the nightgown, then fluffed the feathers with her fingertips. “Personally, I think it’s one of your better selections.”
“You made me sound like some kind of domineering pervert out there!”
“Just as I suspected. Some things do embarrass you.” She gave him a sly smile. “Maybe I should put you to the tampon challenge after all.”
“Maybe you should stop acting like a fool. When you’re dressed like this, do you think you can trust men to behave themselves?”
Darcy narrowed her eyes. “You know, I thought you were being generous. Helping me out a little. Then you bring me to this god-awful place and dress me up like Frump Barbie just so you can laugh your head off.”
“And then you come waltzing out in Prostitute Barbie’s nightgown.”
“You picked it out.”
“I picked it out because it was ugly as hell. I wouldn’t want to see that thing in private, much less in public.”
She gave him a sarcastic smile. “So do you want me to take it off?”
John narrowed his eyes. “You really like to flaunt it, don’t you?”
“And you really like to watch me when I do.”
She expected an objection to that. It never came.
Instead, he dropped his gaze to her breasts and let it hover there for several long, tantalizing moments. When he looked up again, something new was stirring in his expression. Just the force of his unspoken message caused her to take an unintentional step back until she felt the coldness of the mirror on her bare shoulders.
“Don’t bait me, Darcy,” John said, his voice low and charged with intensity. “You’re playing with fire.”
“So what are you going to do? We’re not in your office, which of course is the ideal place for illicit sex. We’re at Wal-Mart. That’s where you screwed up, John. At least the dressing rooms at Neiman’s are carpeted.”
“So if we were at Neiman’s, we’d be having sex right now?”
“If we were at Neiman’s, sex would be the last thing on my mind.”
“Then maybe I didn’t screw up after all.”
“In your dreams, repo man.”
She swiped her hand against his arm to shove him aside, only to have him grab her wrist and pull her back.
“You made a big mistake when you forced me to drag you in here,” John said.
“Oh, yeah? Why is that?”
“Because I’m one of those men you can’t trust to behave himself.”
With that, he slid his other hand around her waist, pulled her up next to him, and smothered her mouth with his. It shocked her so much that her first reaction was to pull away, but she had nowhere to go. John leaned into her, crowding her against the mirror, at the same time he thrust his hand into her hair, crushing it in his fist to hold her in place as his mouth moved over hers. It was a burning, reckless, unrelenting kiss she never would have expected from a man so utterly in control of everything.
But wasn’t that what he was doing right now? Taking complete control of her?
Anger bubbled up inside her, but she didn’t know if she was mad at him for being a presumptuous, clothes-picking, kiss-stealing tyrant, or mad at herself for being so hot for him whether she liked it or not.
So damned hot.
She couldn’t deny it. She’d had this in the back of her mind almost from the first moment they met. And now that it was happening, she didn’t give a damn about the circumstances.
No. Wrong. Don’t you dare give in to this. Somehow, some way, you’re going to regret it.
But she was too far gone, and there was no stopping now. She skimmed her hands along his chest to his shoulders, then looped her arms around his neck. He felt so good beneath her hands—so hard and solid and powerful—and just touching him made a tiny moan of satisfaction rise in her throat. She’d lied before. He was GQ material, as long as they did a spread of ruggedly sexy men wearing designer birthday suits.
He grasped her thigh just beneath the feathered hem of her gown, and shivers zoomed all the way to her toes. That was no cliché. Her toes felt as if she’d stuck them in an electrical socket. He moved his palm slowly up her thigh, replacing the shivers with heat that seemed to melt right into her bones.
He pulled away until his lips just brushed hers. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he murmured, his voice a harsh whisper. “God, Darcy, I . . .”
But he didn’t finish the thought. He tilted his head and dove in again at a new angle designed to take even more of her mouth with his. Ahh, this was what it was like to be kissed by a man who really knew how, how to hold her, how to touch her, how to drown her with feeling. From day one, every interaction between them had been a power struggle of some kind, but now, as she thought about the fourteen long years she’d spent on the receiving end of ordinary, bland, boring kisses, she decided if John wanted to whack her over the head and drag her back to his cave, she’d hand him a club.
Then a thought sparked to life, deep in the back of her mind.
Power struggle?
You don’t know what you do to me . . .
Slowly Darcy fought her way back to consciousness, just enough to realize what was happening. That age-old feeling surged through her, an underlying power from all her beauty-queen years that was so strong it superseded everything else.
As soon as she had a man sexually, she had him every other way there was.
She melted away from John and opened her eyes, watching as he opened his and looked down at her with a heavy-lidded expression of pure desire.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, the husky tone of his voice telling her exactly where he’d like to go, which was anywhere with a bed. She caressed the back of his neck with her fingertips, leaning in to press her breasts against his chest and turn her lips close to his ear.
“How about some real clothes, John?” she murmured. “Take me someplace nice. Then we’ll go wherever you want to.”
John’s expression faltered. He blinked, as if trying to get his bearings, then backed away a little, his face suddenly clouded with suspicion.
“So that’s the game we’re playing?”
Darcy leaned away. “What?”
“Do you intend to spend the rest of your life begging men to throw you a bone?”
“Throw me a . . .” She yanked herself away from him. “Hey, I didn’t ask you to bring me here! And I didn’t ask you to kiss me!”
“But you didn’t ask me to stop, did you?”
“Were you looking for a way to recoup that hundred dollars you offered to spend? For all that stunning generosity, you thought I ought to sleep with you?”
“You know better than that,” John said hotly. “I offered you a hundred bucks with no strings attached, and I meant it. And that was pretty damned generous, if you ask me. What pisses me off is that you’re trying to con me into more.”
“Of course I want more! I feel as if I’ve lost my whole life! And just being in this place makes me feel as if there’s no hope of ever getting it back. I’ve already been humiliated enough for one lifetime, but you’re determined to heap on more!”
“I’m trying to help you! You’re the one who humiliated yourself by walking out of here wearing that thing!”
“I swear to God I’ll we
ar a gunny sack before I take anything from you!”
“Right. This coming from a woman who married a wealthy man old enough to be her father. Was that a love match, Darcy? Or did you just like all those expensive things he gave you in return for sex?”
His accusation hit so close to home that Darcy’s cheeks flushed with humiliation. “Get out.”
“Darcy—”
“I said get out!”
He glared at her a moment more, then ripped open the door and stalked out of the dressing room. Shaking with anger, Darcy changed back into the clothes she’d worn into the store. He didn’t understand what it was like to have everything, then lose everything. He just didn’t. She hated these clothes. She hated this store. She hated what her life had become.
But most of all, she hated John.
She dumped the pile of clothes onto the counter outside the dressing room. Twyla had returned, and her wide-eyed expression said she’d heard every word of their argument, but the fact that she hadn’t sent for security told Darcy that she took her entertainment wherever she could get it. John stood outside the dressing room waiting for her, but she didn’t even glance in his direction. She just headed for the front of the store.
Without a word, he followed her out to his car. As he stuck the key in the ignition, she ventured a sidelong glance. He wore that stone-faced expression she’d seen dozens of times before, the one that said, I’m right, you’re wrong, and that’s that, which made it clear to Darcy that she was getting no apology from him.
All the way to back to the office, she looked out the passenger window, refusing to speak to him until he pulled into the parking lot and came to a halt next to Gertie.
“I’ll see you at work on Monday morning,” she told him. “Assuming, of course, that I decide to come back.”
She yanked open the car door and got out. She pulled her keys from her purse and opened Gertie’s passenger door. John didn’t drive away. He just sat there watching her less-than-graceful crawl over the seat to get behind the wheel, and she felt humiliated all over again. But it wasn’t until she was out of the parking lot heading for her parents’ house that the full extent of the day’s disgrace hit her hard.
