by Jane Graves
Yes, she was mad at him. Furious, to be exact. But she was also mad at herself. She’d made a very big mistake. John had given her a hundred bucks. Why had she asked for more? Shouldn’t she have known that somehow he’d throw that right back in her face?
She’d told him she didn’t know if she was coming back on Monday morning, but in light of this, she didn’t know how she could even consider it.
If she were smart, from now on she’d stay as far away from John Stark as possible.
John sat in the parking lot, watching that god-awful car of Darcy’s sputter down the street. There was nothing about that woman that didn’t infuriate him. Absolutely nothing. But he had to admit that the longer he thought about it, the more his anger faltered.
Yes, she’d asked for more than he’d offered her. Practically threw herself at him to get it. But desperate situations made for desperate people, and Darcy was more desperate than most. And would she even have done that if he hadn’t kissed her in the first place?
He couldn’t believe it. He’d kissed her. Then essentially propositioned her. Had he actually intended to go through with that? He’d never been dumb about women, so what was the matter with him now?
Grow up. You’re forty-two, not seventeen.
The truth was that he’d always felt superior to other men who had no self-control in the presence of a beautiful woman. He was probably the only man on earth who could go into a strip club and come out with dollar bills still in his pocket. Tony—never. He’d convert half his paycheck into thong stuffers.
But Darcy . . . what made her so different?
She was full of sharp edges—the least of which were her sarcastic mouth and her devious mind—but the moment he’d felt her give in and dissolve in his arms, so soft and warm and willing, he’d quite simply lost his mind. He’d felt like a kid who was dying to get laid and didn’t much care what he had to do to make it happen.
But that didn’t mean she was blameless in this situation. After all, he wouldn’t have kissed her if she hadn’t provoked him by wearing that slutty little nightgown. What kind of woman walks around in public wearing practically nothing?
Then again, she wouldn’t have worn the slutty little nightgown if he hadn’t pulled it off the rack in the first place. And he wouldn’t have pulled it off the rack in the first place if he’d just let her pick out whatever she wanted.
Unfortunately, as he played the blame game backward, it all ended up squarely back in his lap.
He’d wanted to teach her a lesson. Knock her attitude down a peg or two. But subjecting her to his scrutiny with every piece of clothing she put on had been taking things a little too far. He could have just given her the hundred bucks and let her buy whatever she wanted to. But no. He had to be a bastard about it to make his point. Amy harped on that constantly. Said it was his tragic flaw. He had to inform everyone else of what was wrong with their lives and tell them exactly how to go about improving them. Because, of course, he was such a genius with his own life.
Well, crap.
It would probably be best for both of them if he fired her or if she quit and that was the last they ever saw of each other, but still he couldn’t shake the feeling that he needed to do something to make this right again. But he didn’t have a clue what that might be.
Chapter 11
Maybe you need to try Internet dating,” Lyla said. “They say you can search for exactly the kind of man you want. You just tell them you want one with a good job and who makes a lot of money.”
Darcy sighed and muted the TV. “I don’t think Internet dating is as easy as that, Mom. If it were, every woman on earth would be ordering a rich man.”
“Roxanne’s daughter found a boyfriend on the Internet.”
“You mean the one who stole five thousand dollars from her and went back to his ex-wife?”
“She’s a homely girl who dresses funny. That was the best she could do. You have more going for you, as long as you don’t let yourself go.”
Darcy hit the mute button again and brought the sound back up. God forbid she miss one more moment of Celebrity Makeovers. And then when this was over at four o’clock, it was time for a Wheel of Fortune marathon on the Game Show Network.
She sighed. Saturday in the Dumphries household was a very long day.
But what did it matter? She felt so rotten after what happened yesterday with John that she didn’t feel like doing anything else, anyway. She still hadn’t decided if she wanted to go back to work on Monday morning or not. Then again, she wasn’t completely sure that, even if she decided to go back, there would still be a job open.
And then she thought about that kiss.
Her eyes drifted closed as she imagined it all over again. That was just her luck these days, wasn’t it? To find a man who could kiss like that but who was also the most maddening one she’d ever known.
“My God. Darcy!”
Darcy’s eyes snapped open to find her mother leaning close and peering at her hair. Darcy drew back. “What?”
“You have gray showing!”
Darcy sat up straight. “No, I don’t.”
Lyla grabbed Darcy’s chin and turned her head. “Oh, yes, you do. Right there at your temples.”
Darcy put her hand to her head. Surely not. She’d missed her regular appointment to have her hair cut and colored last week—these days she was finding it more difficult than usual to spare a hundred and twenty dollars—but she thought she had a little time before the problem became critical.
“You’re letting yourself go,” Lyla said, panic rising in her voice. “You can’t do that. Men don’t look twice at women with gray hair.”
Darcy ran to the bathroom and peered in the mirror. Her mother was right. She had roots.
She sat down on the toilet lid, her heart thudding, trying not to panic, but it was a hard-won battle. Maybe hats were coming back in style. But even if that were true, she’d have to buy hats. She might as well pay to have her hair colored.
Lyla came to the bathroom door. “I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were right,” Darcy muttered. “What am I going to do? I can’t afford to have my hair done.”
“Color it yourself. I color mine.”
And look how that had turned out.
Her mother had opted for blond at an early age and had never given it up, so getting beneath all the chemicals to discover her real hair color would be like excavating King Tut’s tomb. She had the eyebrows of a brunette, the skin tone of a blond, and the personality of a brassy redhead. But the hair itself?
Maybe the world would never know.
“I am not coloring it myself,” Darcy said.
“Well, fine, Miss Snooty Britches. Go gray. See if I care.”
Okay. She had to get a grip here. Since she didn’t have highlights, her hair was all one color. Why couldn’t she color it herself? As long as she picked out something that was close to her natural hair color, how badly could she screw it up?
She ran to the drugstore, bought hair color in a dark ash brown that promised a hundred percent gray coverage or her money back, then came home and locked herself in the bathroom. It wasn’t hard to apply, and thirty minutes later, as she was rinsing it out, she was congratulating herself on this money-saving option. Was it really worth paying a colorist a hundred bucks just to do this? No. Of course it wasn’t.
She towel-dried her hair, went to the mirror, and stifled a scream.
This wasn’t dark ash brown. This was black. Coal black. Midnight black. Goth black. Black-hole black.
She grabbed the blow dryer, hoping her hair would look lighter once it was dry. It did. By about half a shade. But since it was about three shades darker than her natural color, she still looked undead.
She stared at herself in the mirror, tears coming to her eyes, trying to tell herself it wasn’t as bad as she thought. At least not a single strand of gray showed. But that was only because this horrible color had scared away all the surface gray, t
hen seeped into her skull to ferret out any hair that was even thinking of looking old.
This was it. Her life was over. She might as well haul out those razor blades. What was the point of going on now? She’d rather be dead than be walking man repellent.
She heard her mother shout from the other room. “Darcy! Come quick!”
“No! I’m never coming out of this bathroom again as long as I live!”
Okay, so she sounded like a thirteen-year-old drama queen, but with hair like this, she was entitled to.
“No!” her mother shouted. “You have to see this!”
Darcy grabbed a towel, wound it around the dye job from hell, and went to the living room, expecting to see the aliens her mother had always believed in making crop circles in the front yard. Instead Lyla held a big, beautiful gold box wrapped with a blue ribbon. Darcy recognized that kind of box. It came from Amaryllis.
“It was just delivered with your name on it,” Lyla said. “What do you suppose is in it?”
Her mother set the box down. Darcy opened it, and she couldn’t believe what she saw.
Clothes. Gorgeous clothes. Shirts and pants and skirts. Everything she pulled out elicited a gasp from her mother, and Darcy gasped a few times herself. Who in the world could have sent her—
Jeremy. He’d done it again. Only this time he’d graduated from coffee to couture, finally stepping up to the plate with something that was not only useful, but fashionable. Beautiful, glorious clothes from her favorite store, in just the colors she loved. How had he known?
“There’s no card,” Lyla said. “Who do you suppose all this is from?”
“The only man I know right now who can afford to shop at Amaryllis.”
Her mother’s face went blank for a moment, and then her eyebrows shot up. “Of course! Jeremy Bridges! Oh, my God! This is even better than that coffee he gave you! Do you suppose he’s actually getting serious?”
Darcy wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe Jeremy was putting aside his game playing to pursue an actual relationship. She still remembered the sarcastic lilt in his voice when he refused to give her the receipt for the Starbucks card, but maybe this was his way of making up for that.
And maybe not.
“I don’t trust him,” Darcy said.
“Trust him? Of course you trust him. What’s not to trust about any man who gives you beautiful things like this?” She picked up the sleeve of one of the shirts. “The tags have been removed. I wonder how much he spent?”
Darcy wondered, too. Just how far had he gone this time to rattle her cage? If he’d spent a thousand dollars on coffee . . .
“I’ll get the catalog. We can add it up.” She started to rise, then sat back down again. “Never mind. I left it at the office.”
“Then call the store. You know all the staff there. I have to know.”
Darcy found the number and called the store. Betty came on the line, an older woman who’d worked there since Darcy could remember.
“Hi, Betty. It’s Darcy McDaniel.”
“Ms. McDaniel! So nice to hear from you. It’s been far too long since you’ve been in.”
Darcy loved that fawning attitude. Betty knew how to kiss ass with the best of them.
“I was hoping you could tell me something. A gentleman was in there recently to buy me a gift, and I was wondering—”
Wait a minute. This would get her nowhere. Jeremy wouldn’t have come in himself. He would have sent a personal shopper, which would have been a woman, and since dozens of women came in there every day, would Betty even have known . . .
“Oh, yes,” Betty said. “A gentleman certainly was in here last night. I assume you got the delivery today?”
So Jeremy had actually come in there himself? The very thought of that put a smile on Darcy’s face.
“Yes,” Darcy said. “I just received it. Uh . . . Betty? Just between you and me . . .”
“Yes?”
“How much did he spend?”
“Hmm . . . I don’t remember exactly. Let me look.”
A minute later she came back on the phone, her voice low and confidential. “Three hundred and eighty-four dollars.”
Darcy felt a shot of disappointment. He’d spent only three hundred and eighty-four dollars on clothes when he’d gone a full thousand on coffee?
“That’s all?” she said.
“Storewide clearance sale,” Betty added.
Thank God. That explained the pitiful price tag. “Did he say anything about me when he was in there?”
“No, not really. Actually, he didn’t talk much at all. He brought one of our catalogs in, opened it, and pointed to what he wanted.”
Darcy blinked. “What?”
“And he kept saying, ‘No pink. She doesn’t like pink.’ He wouldn’t even consider mauve or rose.”
Darcy froze. It couldn’t be.
For a moment she just stood there, gripping the phone, as her mind circled back to her Wal-Mart shopping excursion. Only two men on earth knew she hated pink. One of them had skipped the country.
The other one was John.
On Monday morning, John arrived at work just after eight o’clock, relieved to see Darcy’s car there. At least she’d shown up today, which meant it was possible she wasn’t going to hate him for the rest of her life.
He went inside the building. She wasn’t at her desk, but he saw a light on in the storeroom and figured she was in there getting supplies or fishing through old records. He went to the coffeepot for a shot of caffeine, then headed to his office. He still didn’t know how she was going to react to everything, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Don’t say a word if she doesn’t. Just go about your business as usual.
That was hard to do, though, when he was still reeling from his traumatic experience on Friday night. The Galleria was every woman’s dream and every man’s nightmare, one of those malls where everybody dresses up to go shopping and they charge you to breathe the air. Fortunately, there had been a big sale at that ridiculous store Darcy loved, so he’d been able to buy more with less. He’d grabbed that catalog from her desk that he’d seen her browsing through at lunch. Even though at this point in her life it was nothing but a wish book, still she’d circled several items she liked, so those were the ones he’d bought. The whole time his mind had been screaming that it was a waste of money, but he just hadn’t been able to stop himself.
He discovered a woman’s clothing store was like a grocery store, because pink really wasn’t pink. It was shrimp. Purple was eggplant. Green was kiwi. And yellow could either be banana or lemon, depending on how loud a yellow it was. The saleswoman kept offering him all these choices, and in the end he’d simply told her if it was circled in the catalog, it was a size six, and it wasn’t shrimp, to stick it in a shopping bag.
Then he handed the salesclerk his credit card and pretended he really wasn’t spending such an outrageous amount of money. He was a man who was careful about the disposition of every dime he made, but he’d had to cough up nearly four hundred dollars before his conscience had even begun to leave him alone. By the time he left the store, he’d actually broken a sweat. He never spent that much money all in one place unless it was a gun shop, an electronics counter, or a car dealership.
He only hoped she’d see the clothes as the peace offering they were and not flip out and tell him again that she refused to take anything he gave her. He had no idea what he’d do if she did that again.
He turned on the light in his office, and the first thing he saw was an envelope in the middle of his desk. Curious, he set down his mug and opened it. It contained cash. A lot of cash. He counted it and got a shock.
Three hundred and eighty-four dollars?
Just then, the door to the storeroom opened and Darcy came out. She was carrying a few office supplies, which she deposited on her desk. Her hair seemed different today. Darker, maybe? Maybe not. Finally he just decided it looked different because she had it in a
ponytail instead of down around her shoulders. And her clothes . . .
Wait a minute. This wasn’t what he’d bought for her. Instead, she wore a pair of white pants that fit a little awkwardly and a knit shirt exactly like ones he’d seen recently that were priced two for ten dollars.
Slowly the truth came to him. She wasn’t wearing Donna Whozits or Calvin Whatever.
She was wearing Sam Walton.
She went to the coffeepot to pour herself a cup. He left his office and grabbed a stack of repossession orders from the top of a file cabinet. He mumbled a “good morning,” and she mumbled one back. He pretended to thumb through the stack while she wiped stray drops of water off the table where the coffeepot sat, but soon he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
“You returned the clothes,” he said.
She paused. “Yes.”
“You didn’t have the receipt.”
“They know me there.”
John nodded. “The shirt you’re wearing now is nice.”
“Thank you. I do love wearing popular styles. As it turns out, one of my mother’s friends has one just like it.”
“And the pants. I see you bypassed the pink ones.”
“When it’s my dime, I can buy whatever I want to.”
Which made him wonder where she’d gotten the money, since she’d returned to him all the money he’d spent. Then he looked down at her left hand.
Her wedding ring was gone.
When he met her eyes again, it was clear she’d seen him staring. She turned away, straightening the coffee and filters and stir sticks for the third time. “It didn’t go with my wardrobe anymore. Nothing’s worse than wearing overstated jewelry with . . .” She stopped and looked down at herself. “Understated clothes.”
What she didn’t mention was that she’d pawned that overstated jewelry to get the money to buy the understated clothes it didn’t go with.
“I thought you hated Wal-Mart,” he said.
“I do. I thought you hated high-priced clothing stores.”
“I do.”
“So why did you go there?” Darcy asked.
