Compulsively Mr. Darcy (3 page)

“Charles, where's William?” Caroline's voice sounded too loud over the phone. “I keep missing him. I even made sure to wake up early this morning and he's already gone from his room. No answer.”

“Why do you want him?” Bingley sleepily said before he realized the stupidity of his question. There were nine reasons why his sister always wanted the man: the row of nine zeros after the first digit in Darcy's bank account.

“I want him to join Louisa and me for a facial. They have this wonderful citrus scrub.”

“Leave him alone. He's here for a rest, not to be your spa buddy. You don't know Darcy at all if you think he'd set foot in a spa, much less get a facial.”

“Fine, no facial. But what he needs is a relaxing massage. He's been so tense and restless. Every time I've seen him lately, he'd fidget and move. He couldn't sit still on the plane.”

“That's because he was trying to get away from you and Louisa. Your talking for hours nonstop gave him a headache.”

“We were having a great bonding conversation,” she insisted. “Your interrupting and telling me to leave him alone made it seem as if I was bothering him.”

“You were bothering him. He was too polite to tell you.”

“I don't know why he's friends with you. He's always polite and a real gentleman, and you're… you're the boy who never grows up!” she yelled and hung up on him.

“We're friends because,” Bingley said to the mirror a few minutes later, shaving, “Darcy thinks I need to be taken care of, and I let him because I know he has a great need to take care of someone.”

Dressed, he went to Darcy's room and knocked. Though he couldn't hear any noise inside, he suspected Darcy was silently checking the peephole to make sure it wasn't Caroline. “I'm alone. No sisters.” When Darcy opened the door, Bingley asked, “Want to join me on an adventure today? See some local sights?”

“If you mean another chance of getting you out of some scrapes, no thank you. I've barely recovered from the last one.”

“Took my Ritalin today; you should be safe.” Bingley sat on the couch and took a guava from the bowl on the coffee table. He sniffed, appreciating its apple-pear smell. He tried not to make too much noise eating the crunchy fruit. Darcy hated hearing loud chewing.

Darcy walked toward the window. “I'll be safer here.”

“By staring out of that window all day? Besides, you're not all that safe. Caroline called me earlier. She was looking for you.” Bingley grinned and watched Darcy suppress a grimace at the mention of Caroline.

“I'm going to get some work done.”

“You promised your sister and your cousin you'd relax on this vacation.”

“I'm going to relax by making sure some work gets done.” Darcy waved in the direction of his briefcase and laptop. “I hardly call this work, the little that I do now.”

“You mean you'll only work twelve hours, instead of eighteen hours, today.”

“Probably.”

“I was being sarcastic. The only non-work thing you've done since we arrived is the visit to the orphanage.”

“Have you heard from them yet? When are we going back for another meeting?”

Curious at the eager note in Darcy's voice, Bingley raised an eyebrow. “You almost sound as if you don't mind going through another meeting.”

“I don't like things unfinished. It felt unfinished, the whole interview.”

“I don't mind. They can take all the time in the world to fix their paperwork if it means we stay here long enough for you to learn to chill. I promised your sister and your cousin I'd have you relaxed before I brought you back to them.” That was the main reason Bingley agreed to come to Vietnam with his sisters. It was the perfect excuse to get Darcy to accompany them, telling him they needed a responsible, objective person outside of the family to make sure the adoption was legit. Bingley knew Darcy couldn't resist the urge to direct something.

“I am relaxing,” Darcy said in a terse, controlled voice. “As soon as the adoption is settled, I'm ready to leave the country.”

“You're at a five-star resort next to a beautiful beach in the third largest city of this old country with two thousand years of history. People dream of visiting here, and you want to get stuck on a plane again with my family?”

“You sound like a bloody brochure. I can have Richard send my own plane here.”

“Read about this place while I was recovering in my room the first day.” Bingley ignored Darcy's threat. Darcy's cousin wouldn't send the company jet to Vietnam, no matter how much Darcy demanded it, and the chance of safety-conscious Darcy taking a commercial flight to escape this enforced vacation was too slim to worry about.

“I'll go for a walk later,” Darcy allowed after a silent moment.

“Get a massage on the beach. Lie on the warm sand and let them knead your tension away.” Bingley cringed at sounding like Caroline.

“I don't like strangers touching me.”

“You don't even like people you know well touching you. The massage might help your headaches.”

“I don't get headaches,” Darcy said coldly.

“Sure, right.” Bingley picked up his half-eaten fruit and started eating again, this time not caring if he was chewing loudly. “You mean you haven't sat in a darkened room for hours at a time these past few months, biting people's heads off if they even breathe too loud?”

Darcy glared at him. “Noises bother me.”

“I think you should see a doctor or even an acupuncturist—” He broke off and shook his head. He'd forgotten whom he was talking to. “Fine. Go ahead and suffer in silence. Promise me, though, you won't work all day today. Just because we lost the last company doesn't mean we need to rush and look for another one now.”

“I didn't lose the last company. I didn't care enough to go all out for it.”

“That proves my point. You don't care enough. You're losing interest in things that used to challenge you.”

“As a new challenge, perhaps I should adopt an orphan while I'm here,” Darcy quipped.

“How about one a bit older, doesn't need her nappies changed, but would stick around to change yours in the future.” Bingley again looked through the fruit bowl.

“Never saw the need nor met the woman who I would even want to stick around that long.”

“There's always Caroline.” Bingley chose an orange and started to peel it, throwing the peel on the table. That remark and the carelessly thrown peel earned him a glare.

“You, on the other hand, have not yet met a woman who didn't want to wipe your arse and your bank account clean.”

“I don't have good luck with meeting nice women,” Bingley agreed. “Speaking of nice women, what did you think of Miss Bennet? Wasn't she an angel?”

“She runs an orphanage in a Third-World country, of course she's an angel.”

“It's not a Third-World country anymore; it's a developing country. And don't sound so suspicious. You'd have suspected Mother Teresa of being a con woman.”

“Until I had her checked out, yes.”

“Miss Bennet answered all your questions completely… and patiently, I might add. She was honest enough to admit she didn't have enough background information to make a decision. She was very professional, very thorough.”

“Too professional. Too thorough,” Darcy said. “Probably wants to know how much we're all worth before she offers up the child.”

“She had the investigator's report on Hurst's financial background already.”

“Which is nothing to yours or mine. I don't like it. This particular orphanage usually does extensive, exhaustive background checks on the parents. That's one of the reasons it's considered one of the best. Your angel should have had that information already.”

“I wouldn't be as suspicious as you for all the coins in the world.” Bingley stood. He had an appointment with his friend the cyclo driver, who'd offered to show him around the city. “I'm out of here. Try not to spend all your time working.”

***

After Bingley left, Darcy moved from the window to a chair. Despite what he had said to Bingley, the orphanage and Miss Bennet's professionalism did impress him. What he heard during the interview was consistent with his research. He was still suspicious, but that was just his nature.

He slumped in his chair and stared, unseeing, at the ceiling. Much as he hated to admit it, Bingley was also correct about him. Since the fiasco with his sister, Georgiana, and that cult last winter, he'd lost interest in things that used to challenge him. For the first time in years, he had not been able to escape the tedium of his life by burying himself into work. He felt beaten. All he could manage lately was a sense of ennui he couldn't shake.

These past months, he'd been focused on helping Georgiana recover. He had failed miserably.

He loved his sister deeply, but he had never been able to find a way to bridge the indescribable chasm between them. Perhaps it was their age difference. When their father died and Darcy became her guardian at twenty-two, he was too young to be a father figure, yet too old, too weighed down with responsibility to be the playful brother a nine-year-old child needed. He wished Georgiana could have known him when he was a happy, young boy, before their mother died.

He raised a hand to cover his eyes, to block out memories better left alone.

The air felt dense and dragging. The familiar sensation of not being able to take a full breath overpowered him. Immobilized in the chair, he decided not to fight it. He dropped his hand, closed his eyes, and waited patiently for the heaviness to go away in its own time.

A moment later, he rallied. He would find a way out of this languor. That was why he was here in Vietnam, wasn't it?

He allowed his mind to wander, in search of a soothing thought or feeling.

He was suddenly at the window of the orphanage's office again. He had just asked Miss Bennet another question to which he already knew the answer. Only half listening to her reply, his eyes absently scanned the view outside.

From behind a bend in the road leading into the courtyard, a vision appeared. At first, it was like any insignificant image of a fleeting shadow. As the shadow moved closer to him, unexplainably, a surprising sensation of lightness, of delight, and of comfort enveloped him. The shadow became a figure of a woman. Left arm swinging in an enchanting wave, right hand holding the strap of a shoulder bag, the woman moved unhurriedly from under the canopy of a large tree. As she emerged from its shade, she stopped. Palms up, she slowly raised her arms and stretched them toward the sky. Face lifted to the sun, she then unexpectedly, uninhibitedly, and unself-consciously twirled.

He could almost hear the laughter he saw on her face. Long, dark hair tumbled down as she joyously danced with the warm rays. His fingers tingled, twitching in their own subconscious desire to reach out and touch that happiness.

All too soon for him the twirling stopped, and she moved with a graceful calmness toward the orphanage. She paused briefly to smell a white flower at the top of a bush. The unknown fragrance almost reached his nostrils as he watched her take a long sniff. Then she smiled again, as if showing her gratitude for the flower's gift.

He was entranced.

As quick as a blink, she passed through the courtyard and disappeared.

He did not know how long the moment lasted. It must have been as long as it took the orphanage director to respond to his question, for he knew he had repeated the question as soon as the words left his mouth.

The air had become lighter. He could hear his even, relaxed breathing as he came back to his hotel room. The grace, the joy, in the simple twirl of a woman reveling in the feel of the sun on an ordinary day, the memory of that cherished moment had helped unwind the tightness around his chest.

He smiled a thank you to the unknown wood nymph.

Embarrassed at the fanciful name he had given to her, he shook his head, glad no one could hear his thoughts and lock him up for losing his mind.

Earlier, he had halfheartedly hinted to Bingley at returning to the orphanage. He wanted to experience the vision again. No. He would not return to seek her mirage. The magic of her might dissolve into something banal, or worse, something ugly.

He chuckled. His family and Bingley were right to be concerned about him: he was afraid of a shadow. Hearing his own unexpected laughter, he laughed again. He stood and moved toward the window.

Tomorrow, perhaps he'd leave his suite and explore the beach.

“Dr. Bennet, you have an urgent phone call from America,” the hospital director said.

Heart racing, Elizabeth rushed to the phone in her office.

“Elizabethy, darling!” an accented voice greeted her.

“Arrrgh! Hussein! I thought somebody had died. I ran here.”

“You're in a hospital, darling. Somebody is always dying. You shouldn't rush unless you're the one at fault.”

“What do you want? And don't tell me it's an emergency because I know it's not.” She rolled her eyes, partly in humor and partly in frustration. “And how did you get the hospital director to be your messenger boy?”

“I always go to the top, darling,” Dr. Hussein Ahmed said. “You've been ignoring my calls to your cell. Are you still mad at me for voting Republican in the last election?”

“Traitor!”

He gave a long sigh. “Darling, we've been through this before. Your childhood was warped from too many protest marches in Berkeley. The Republican Party made me a rich doctor. How can I not support them?”

“You sold out.”

“You could have too if you'd listened to me and not specialized in nasty microbes. People with fascinating infections rarely can afford to pay their bills, darling.”

“What's the point of this nonurgent phone call?”

“I'm coming to your chest of the woods.”

“Neck of the woods,” she automatically corrected.

“Neck, chest. Who cares?” He laughed. “I'm coming to Vietnam to work at a five-star resort. And I want to treat you and your sister to some fun and relaxation. Shouldn't be much of an expense; you girls are cheap.”

“What's the catch?”

“Darling, why do you always think there's a catch in my noble offers?” he said. “But you got me. I have a really good deal on a suite at the Net Thi Phen Resort for a couple of weeks. I can't be there for the first week, give or take a few days, so you'll have the whole place to yourself then. What do you say?”

“And what do I have to do for this privilege?”

“Why are you so suspicious?”

“Because there's always a twist in your offers,” she returned.

“All right, I'll confess. I need you to fill in for me as a doctor at the resort next week—yes, next week, you know I tend to do things last minute—treating the VIP foreign guests.” Here, his voice lowered. “I'm going to be putting some silicone on a famous up-and-coming Hollywood actress. Can't tell you her name—not ethical—but she was a lead in the movie”—he whispered a name she didn't recognize. When she didn't make any response, he gave a disappointed sigh. “I forget you're clueless about anything remotely pop culture. You don't read gossip magazines. Darling, you'd learn more about life reading the tabloids than you do reading your infectious disease journals, I keep telling you.”

“Why should I bail you out? I don't want to treat rich tourists.”

“I know it's hard for you to mingle and be nice to the rich and not just make fun of them,” he said. “But just a little kissing-ass-service with a smile and you get a free vacation out of it, and help your best friend out here. Darling, a gay best friend adds a lot of cache when you're a single woman.”

“Stop promoting yourself.” She wrinkled her nose. “It's short notice. I can't take time off from the hospital here.”

“It's already done. I shamelessly guilt-tripped the hospital director into clearing your schedule and let you have a little relaxation and pampering. Americans are used to being pampered. We need it, I told him.”

“What? You had the audacity—” She stopped, wondering why she was surprised. Hussein did not lack impudence. That, unfortunately, was a big part of why she liked him.

“By the time you leave the resort, I'll turn you into trophy-wife material yet, my sweet.”

“Fat chance.”

“You're gorgeous, but you don't know that, and that's always been one of your charms.” Before she could accuse him of using flattery, he continued, “Not that you couldn't use some help to turn that granola natural beauty into something trendier. Please visit the spa and get waxed or learn to shave properly during the month you're staying at the resort.”

“Now it's a whole month. You're covering your ass in case you don't get here at all.”

“You found me out. Yes, I'm making contingency plans in case… well, sometimes the silicone leaks, you know, and I need to be here to charm them so they won't sue my pants off,” he laughed.

She smiled. It was very hard to stay upset with such a good-humored guy. She impulsively decided to accept his offer and they talked a few more minutes about the details involved. Before he rang off, he again reminded her to make sure to use the spa services to make over herself.

When she walked into their house later that day, she saw her sister bonelessly plopped on the couch.

“Bad day?” Elizabeth said and set her bag down.

Jane sat up. “I just now got off the phone with Aunt Mai. I caved and called her.”

“About the gay couple adopting?”

“They're not the ones who are officially adopting, remember?” Jane sighed. “It looks like I won't get the report I want soon enough.”

“What did Aunt Mai say?”

“She agreed there's not enough information to let the Hursts have a child. Neither she nor I have difficulty with the idea of the men, if it comes down to it, but we need to look at the situation more carefully.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Elizabeth poured herself some tea from a pot on the coffee table. “What's your worry?”

“I have to tell the Hursts we need more time and I'm not looking forward to it. I hate to have them feel they've wasted their time and money because of our inefficiency. I feel like I'm failing handling this adoption.”

“Listen, the fact that you're stressing about it shows you're not failing the child.” Elizabeth put her cup down and rubbed her sister's shoulder. “I say take all the time you need and be as indecisive as you want until you're sure. When you're confident that you can live with the consequences of your decision, that's when you know you've done right for the child.”

A wry smile appeared on Jane's face. “Coming from my fearless, quick-to-make-snap-decisions sister, that's saying something.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Yes, well, I know I have a tendency to be more impulsive and decisive than wise, but in this case, I think your instinct to go slow is on target.”

Jane perked up. “You're right. I'll live with my indecision for now.”

“You've been working too hard since we arrived. You need a break. I have news to share.” She explained about Hussein's offer. “Knowing Hussein and how he makes his deals, there won't be much for me to do. I want you to come and stay with me there some time and get away from this place.”

“I can't take too much time away, but I'll try.”

“I have a meeting and a tour with the resort manager after lunch tomorrow to go over details and my duties. How about you come with me and, after my meeting, we'll go check out Merry Bar and say hi to Chau's dad and brothers? She wants to introduce us.”

Jane's schedule was full the next day until late afternoon. “I'll meet you at the restaurant for a drink and meet the Lucs though.”

“I'll relax at the beach and wait for you.” Elizabeth drank the rest of her tea. “Let's go start on dinner. I'm hungry.”

Once in the kitchen, Elizabeth gathered the ingredients for their stir-fry while Jane placed a wok on a heated stove.

“Lizzy, this is perfect. The Hursts and the men are staying at the resort. You'll have a chance to observe them and give me your impression.”

“If they can all afford to stay there, you shouldn't worry then about them wasting their money waiting for your decision. The nightly rate for a room costs more than what most families here earn in a year.” Elizabeth's lips curled. She was a firm believer in not overpaying for a hotel room.
Whish, whish
. She sharpened the blade of the knife against a kitchen stone and winked at her sister. “I'm prepared to face the arrogant Mr. Darcy again.”

“Stop! You're making me spill the oil.” Jane's shoulders shook with laughter as she drizzled drops of peanut oil onto the heated wok. “I can't believe you had the nerve to threaten him. He seemed so intimidating.”

“Ha! It's hard to be intimidated by a guy who faints at the sight of blood.”