“Oh, Jared, calm down. I just said that I’m not dating and have no plans to date. I may, however, take a younger lover if I feel the need.”
Jesus Christ. Was she for real or just joking around to wind Jared up? Her eyes were still hidden behind her dark sunglasses, so I couldn’t tell. But even if she was, the mere implication that she might be interested in taking a younger man as her lover had my fucking heart doing a jig in my chest.
“Seriously, ma? That is completely inappropriate.”
“Men do it all the time. Why can’t I? What about you, Tommy? Do you think it’s inappropriate?” She looked at me with a smirk on her face that said she knew exactly what I thought of her dating younger men, and that inappropriate wasn’t a label I would stick on it.
“Jared… I think that you need to consider the fact that Darcy is a damn fine woman and would have her choice of men — young or not — if she decided to start dating,” I said diplomatically.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Jared countered.
“Okay, boys. Let it drop. I’m not dating anyone, Jared. You have nothing to worry about. However…” She turned her attention to me again. “Since we’re on the subject of relationships, can you explain why you’re attending this wedding without a plus-one, Tommy? I assumed you would show up with some fine young thing on your arm.”
“Well, I’m—”
“Tomás doesn’t date,” Jared interrupted. “He’s practically a fucking monk.”
“—not dating anyone,” I finished, cringing at the way he just blurted out the details of my personal life. “I just don’t have the time right now. I’m focused on my business.”
“Gorgeous, successful guy like you? Seems like you wouldn’t have to make time because you can have whomever you choose, whenever you choose.”
It was hard not to preen when she called me gorgeous, but somehow, I managed not to puff out my chest.
“And he does. This man once had a woman break into his apartment, tie herself to the bed, and wait for him.”
“She didn’t break in,” I corrected. “The doorman let her in—”
“Either way, she was naked in your bed, and you just sent her home.”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t interested.”
“A woman got naked and tied herself to your bed, and you weren’t interested?” Darcy asked.
“He’s not telling the whole story—”
“You’re right. Maybe she needs a visual,” Jared said, pulling his phone out. He did what I presumed was a quick internet search then handed the phone to Darcy.
“Uh…wow,” she said, both eyebrows arrowing upward. “Chicago’s sexy weather girl was naked in your bed, and you sent her home?”
“Not exactly? There’s more to the story.”
Marlowe Thompson and I had met at one of those black-tie events where you bought a plate of rubbery chicken and mushy salad for fifteen hundred dollars just to be in the room where it happens. I was wearing a rented tux and had bought my seat at the table with new money. I was young and brown, and I felt inconspicuous in that room. Marlowe, an outgoing and well-connected woman, spotted me and attached herself to my side. She was gorgeous with dark skin the color of warm roasted walnuts and brown eyes that caught and held the sunlight. She should have been it for me.
“That woman stalked you for months, and you never pulled the trigger — not even when she conned her way into your bed.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true.” If we were gonna get specific, she’d tied herself to my bed after I’d expressed my need for submission — completely misinterpreting it. After that, I decided that if she couldn’t pay close enough attention when I revealed my most intimate thoughts and feelings with her, it was a waste of time. “We did…connect a couple of times, but it really just boiled down to the fact that we were two busy people who couldn’t make it work. Like I said…”
“You were busy and uninterested,” Darcy finished for me, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Sounds like you’re using work as an excuse.”
I shrugged. “You’ve seen my calendar. If you scroll back through the last twelve months, you’ll see that this is my first vacation in over a year.”
She frowned and pulled her phone out of her Gucci bag. A couple of taps and swipes of her thumb resulted in a series of tsks and head shaking. “I can’t say that I approve of this, Tommy. I think I’ll give you strict instructions to have fun this weekend.”
“That’s the plan,” I said with a nod.
“Speaking of which, you all need to be at the hotel to meet the groomsmen in an hour, and I’m supposed to go for a final fitting at the seamstress. We better go ahead and order.”
I nodded and opened the menu. “What do you usually get, Jay?”
“I usually get the ribs, but that seems a little heavy if we’re going to a steakhouse later. I think I’m gonna get the veggie burger instead.”
“Hmm. That sounds good, but…” I eyed the menu, but nothing jumped out at me.
“How hungry are you, Tommy? If you’re not too ravenous, we can just get a bunch of shareable plates to split between the two of us.”
I shrugged. “Sure, but I still—”
“I’ll order for us,” she said with such decisive finality that it made my dick twitch.
What the fuck was it about that hint of the bossiness that made me want to feed her everything she’d just ordered to her with my fingers?
Darcy ordered things that I probably wouldn’t have chosen for myself — bacon-wrapped dates, whipped feta with fermented honey and black pepper served with triangles of pita bread, a crispy avocado salad topped with shrimp, a celery root pancake, and mixed spring greens. She insisted that I take my share first, but I ended up preparing her plate, which gave me a weird sense of pleasure that had me daydreaming about serving her in other ways.
Once our plates were clean, I ducked inside as the busboy cleared the table to pay the tab. Darcy was already footing so much of the bill for Jared’s wedding. I didn’t want her to feel obligated to cover this one.
When I got back to the table, they were already gathering their things.
“Listen here, young man,” Darcy said, hoisting her big designer bag on one shoulder while hooking her hand into the bend of my elbow. “I don’t like this sneaky business of you paying the bill. I’m a wealthy woman—”
“I know. And I’m a wealthy man. How would it look to let you pay for my meal?”
“Like someone who allows a woman who cares for him to take care of him.”
That made an involuntary smile come to my lips. “I think in this scenario, you’re the one who needs to be taken care of.”
Darcy’s steps slowed, and she lifted her sunglasses. I did the same so that I could look into her eyes. “This is how you do it, huh?” she asked, a bemused smile on her lips and a slightly wary look in her eyes.
“Do what?”
“Make a girl so desperate for your attention that she breaks into your apartment, strips naked, and ties herself to your bed,” she clarified with a smirk.
“Hm, it might be a little hint of it. Why do you ask? Should I expect you to be waiting in my bed wearing nothing but your gorgeous golden skin?”
Darcy’s light brown eyes stared into mine for a long moment as if she was trying to assess my seriousness. In that moment, they took a noticeable trip down to my lips and across the breadth of my shoulders.
“I can see how it works,” she said, sliding her sunglasses back in place with a smirk.
“I mean, I can turn on the charm if you want a real demonstration.”
“I think that taste was enough for this old lady.”
“First of all, you’re not old, and secondly, that wasn’t nearly enough. A woman like you deserves to be charmed and wooed and wor—”
“Slight change of plans,” Jared interrupted as he picked up a light jog to catch up to us. “I need to meet Brandi at the jeweler so we can pick up our wedding bands—”
/> “But that’s on the schedule for tomorrow—”
“That’s why it’s a slight change of plans, cruise director. Ma, can you drop Tomás off at the hotel?”
“I can just catch an Uber—”
“Absolutely not. I’ll drop you off at hotel. I have to head that way to do some last-minute errands anyway. Besides, it’ll give us a chance to finish this conversation,” she said, giving my bicep a gentle squeeze. I barely resisted the urge to flex under that hand, but I did register a hum of appreciation as her fingers molded over the muscle.
“A’ight. Brandi is gonna swing by here to get me. I’ll catch up with y’all later. Just text me to let me know where you guys land.”
I stifled the urge to sigh. “You have a calendar. That’s the whole purpose of—”
“Got it. Right.” He yanked me into a hug and pounded me on the back, kissed his mother on the cheek, then trotted around the building to where I presumed Brandi would pick him up.
In the car, Darcy took a moment to put some sunblock on her face and shoulders before opening the Benz’s moonroof. I didn’t bother trying not to stare now. There had always been this sort of easy flirting between Darcy and me, and now that we’d reestablished that dynamic, I didn’t see the need to hide my interest. She caught me looking and smiled.
I’d set the groomsmen up at the Mills House Hotel. It was on Meeting Street in the heart of historic Charleston and had the sort of tropical charm that I wanted to revisit while I was in town. Staying at Darcy’s was infinitely better, of course. Anywhere that put me in close proximity of the long brown legs she flashed while getting comfortable behind the steering wheel was a place I wanted to be.
“So, how is Jared doing with all of this? Any cold feet or second-guessing on his part?”
I laughed. “Not even a little bit. I think he’s finally met his match with Brandi.”
A little smile quirked her lips. “I believe you’re right. She’s a nice enough girl. A little pushy, but she means well.”
Brandi was a born and bred Chicagoan, which was a personality in complete contrast with Jared’s traditional Southern upbringing. It was definitely more brash and confrontational, but not unfamiliar to me.
“Did you think that about me when we first met?” I asked. “That I was a little pushy, but I meant well?”
Reluctant to take her eyes off the stop-and-go traffic, she glanced at me then back at the road again. “Tommy, when I met you, I thought, ‘Well, here is a charming young man who knows how to flatter and charm a woman and look at her in a way that makes her feel like there’s no one else in the room.’”
“Hm,” I hummed with a chuckle. “That obvious, huh? I thought I was being subtle and respectful.”
“You were,” she said, then corrected herself. “You are always respectful. Subtle, never. But always respectful. It’s flattering to get that kind of attention from a young man. Especially when you’ve spent a majority of your life married to a man who seemed determined to trade you in for a new and improved model.” Her mouth flattened into a bitter line.
“I’m sorry.”
She scoffed. “I’m not. He cheated on me for years. I wish I didn’t have to deal with the remnants of his affair, but—” She drew in a sharp breath and cringed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all of that.”
“No…it’s fine. It’s not as if we haven’t talked like this before.”
“I know, but it’s not something I want to dredge up right now. Jared’s getting married. This is a happy occasion.”
“Understandable. But just know that I’m ready and willing to be a listening ear. I’m just sorry you had to go through all of that. You deserve so much better, Darcy.”
When I said her name, she looked at me again. A sad smile curved her lips. “You’re a sweetheart for saying so.”
She pulled her car into the valet space in front of the hotel. I signaled to the valet to give us a minute, then turned toward Darcy in my seat. “So, the funny thing about sharing calendars is that I can see yours too. As it turns out, I’m not the only one in need of a little vacation.”
“I live in Charleston. When the weather’s warm, I can take a trip down to the beach whenever I want.”
“Except you don’t.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “I don’t.”
I nodded. “When we were driving in from the airport, Jared asked me to take care of you this weekend—”
“Seriously? Don’t listen to that boy. I’m fine. You’re here to enjoy yourself—”
“Darcy, taking care of you and making sure this weekend is just as memorable for you as it will be for Jared would be enjoyable for me.”
Her eyebrows arrowed upward over her sunglasses. “Are you sure about that? Our schedule seems to be pretty tight.” She tipped her head in the direction of her mounted iPhone that had just thrown up a reminder to ‘meet the guys at the hotel bar for drinks.’
“I made the schedule, Darcy. I can make time.”
Now she turned toward me in the seat. “What exactly are you suggesting here?” she asked.
“Exactly what I said. Let me take care of you this weekend. Let me be your plus-one. I’ll keep your glass full, spin you around on the dance floor, and keep that smile on your face.”
Because she was smiling now, and it was a gorgeous thing to see.
“That’s really sweet but so unnecessary. I don’t need you to do all that.”
“Excuse me if I’m being too bold, but I’m not sure you even know what you need anymore. Like I said at the restaurant, I think you deserve to have your needs catered to.”
“By you? You think you’re the man to do that, huh?” she asked sarcastically. But I heard a note of curiosity and maybe a whisper of desire in there, too. I might have imagined that last bit but that didn’t matter if I could keep that smile on her face and that blush in her cheeks.
“Darcy…” I said with a sigh and shake of my head. “I’m absolutely the right man.”
Her lips parted on a tiny, soft gasp, and I couldn’t keep the smile that felt borderline feral from stretching across my lips. My phone jangled the tune dedicated to schedule reminders. I pulled it out, observed the alert, and silenced it. “Okay, it looks like you need to be at the dress shop for a final fitting, and I’m supposed to start getting drunk in the next five minutes.”
I turned my attention back to Darcy, who still wore a look of surprise. I wanted to lean across the console and draw the tip of my tongue across her wet bottom lip before gripping the back of her neck and inviting her to do what she wanted with me. Instead, I took her hand, turned her palm upward, and kissed the thrumming pulse at her wrist.
“Just give it some thought, Darcy,” I whispered before getting out of the car.
3
Darcy
The thin skin on the inside of my wrist tingled where Tommy’s lips had touched as I watched him cross the sidewalk to the hotel lobby doors. On the list of things I’d thought Tommy Martinez might say, “Let me take care of you,” wasn’t among them. The suggestion seemed innocent enough at first. Sweet, if not slightly insulting. I was the one who took care of people. I planned the things, made sure everyone was fed, bedded, taken care of — I’d done that for him, in fact. But now, this young man that I’d fed at my table wanted to make sure I was happy, to make me smile through the difficult parts of this milestone weekend.
And the look in his eyes when he said it, the way his lips granted the barest of kisses to a place that was both innocent and intimate to kiss…
“Ha…” I coughed out the surprised sound as I finally tore my eyes from the door Tommy had disappeared through without so much as a glance backward. As if he knew that his words and actions had sparked a confused riot of feelings in my body.
I put the car in gear and pulled into traffic. There was a perfectly good explanation for the way my body reacted. It had been a while since I’d been touched so intimately. I was what people called a touchy-feely person.
I liked to give and receive hugs. I was just as generous with my kisses. A good back rub could make a hard day or hurt feelings much better as far as I was concerned. I also liked to be kissed and held, but…there hadn’t been much of that lately. I’d been deprived of that kind of skin-to-skin contact, and the absence of touch probably led to this full-body reaction from just a brush of his lips to the inside of my wrist. Pathetic, I know, but that was the only explanation that made sense.
That, and well… It would be pointless to deny that I’ve been having a hard time since the death and the public humiliation of my District Attorney husband’s young mistress and son showed up at the funeral. I thought I would be done with this part of the grieving process by now, but I kept vacillating between anger and depression and back to anger again. With Jared in Chicago, it was easy to hide the worst of it from him. Or so I thought. I guess I couldn’t be more wrong because my usually self-absorbed son was so worried about me that he asked his best friend to take care of me, so I didn’t ruin his wedding.
And Lil’ Tommy was all too willing and eager to oblige.
Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t seen him in damn near ten years, but Tommy as a confident, self-assured man knocked me for a loop. There had been a hint of that in his eyes on the cover of Architectural Digest, but it was altogether different to witness in person.
When Jared brought bright-eyed, ambitious Tomás Martinez home the first time, I was instantly charmed by him. He had a gracious way about him that went beyond good manners. The smallest gift or invitation resulted in the kind of supplication that made me uncomfortable sometimes. If I invited him to dinner — I had a lot of dinner parties back then — he would linger after the other boys went out to the pool to help straighten up and take out the trash. If we invited him to hang out with us at the beach in the warmer months, he would make store runs, schlep all of the beach equipment to and from the car, and just generally made himself useful.
We had a common love for historical architecture, and he would do tours with me if I was selling a house he wanted to see. And some nights — nights I was often alone — he’d sit by the pool, or in what he called my jungle room, and talk to me about any and everything until the wee hours of the morning. Tommy was deep, philosophical, and emotionally mature in a way I’ve yet to see in men twice his age. And I know that’s a thing that people say when they want to make excuses for their attraction to a much younger person, but it really was true with Tommy. That year he lived in the garçonnière, I felt like we developed a sort of friendship. And sure… I had a fondness for him, and I knew that he probably had a crush on me. Sometimes he sought out my company a little too much — so much that Shannon had commented on it a time or two. And sometimes, the hugs went on a little long. But I never entertained the thought of anything sexual between us because, despite his emotional maturity, he was a boy. My son’s best friend. His crush on me was never broached in a way that made it necessary for me to consider or confront it.
If She Says Yes Page 3
