What's Yours is Mine (22 page)

She closed her eyes. This was why she hadn’t wanted to call. “Phillip, I know you hate me, and you obviously haven’t forgiven me for being ambitious.”
 

“Nothing to forgive. It’s who you are. Driven. Blinders. No room for love. No time to breathe unless you pencil it in. Why did you call, anyway? You want something, don’t you?”

The kicker was, she did. She took a deep breath and dove in, explaining the whole triclosate (and butylparaben?) mess. Phillip chuckled. Maybe she deserved it—a little—but did he have to be so nasty? Will wasn’t this nasty, and he had a lot more reason.
 

Will even seemed to like her, at least some of the time.

By the time she got off the phone, Phillip had agreed to run the tests for her. He also told her how wonderful his new girlfriend was, how much she adored him, how attentive she was, what a wonderful birthday present she’d given him last year, and how lucky he was that Darcy had walked out on him.
 

Darcy got off the phone as quickly as possible. If Phillip wasn’t a chemist with lab access, she’d have been happy never to speak to him again.
 

Even though he was right and she’d been a terrible girlfriend, he was still an ass.

She went back out to the living room, walking with care. Will, still asleep, didn’t stir. She paused as she passed him, frankly devouring him with her gaze. He was asleep; he’d never know. His aquiline nose sloped down to a generous mouth. He had a strong chin, a wide forehead, and who knew what turmoil inside his head?
 

She looked at him differently now, she realized. He wasn’t just a handsome obstacle to her happiness. He was, well, himself. Complex, with emotions simmering under the surface and what seemed to be a strong ethical streak.
 

She stepped out onto the back patio and made her painstaking way down the steep path in the predawn dark, getting her bare legs wet as they brushed against dew-laden plants, then walking across slippery rocks and hard pebbles in bare feet. Then she sat on the tiny sand spar and watched as the sky paled from deep indigo through all the shades of blue to pale, cloudless cerulean.
 

She loved it here. This spot, this land, this home. She loved Will for building it, for putting his stamp on it.
 

With the ocean breeze ruffling her hair, the first rays of sun kissing her cheeks, she mulled the words, the thought. Could she, did she? No, but also yes, and maybe.
 

She loved this place, but she’d probably pack her stuff up and leave, because Will loved it too, and they couldn’t coexist. He couldn’t forgive her for what he thought she’d done. And even if she could prove it wasn’t her doing, he’d said so many other things. He hated what she stood for, who she’d shaped herself to become.
 

Truth was, right now, sitting on the silvery, gritty sand, with bitter cold water lapping her toes, she wasn’t sure who she was or who she wanted to become. She was her father’s daughter, but she also wasn’t. She was a businesswoman, sharp as glass, and she was proud of that, of how much she could accomplish. How it felt to wade in and solve a problem, how it felt to command a team. She loved that. But not everyone was the enemy. If she settled down, whether here or somewhere else, and sent down tentative roots, it might soften her. And that might not be such a bad thing.
 

She wriggled her toes in the sand and felt tiny pebbles slip into the tender spots between her toes, an unaccustomed roughness. It was all brand-new. Where to go from here? What to do?

~*~

Will’s phone was ringing near his ear. His eyes felt glued shut. When he tentatively opened one eye, light sliced his pupil with painful brightness.
 

Whoever it was would call back. He closed his eyes again, fell back into near-drugged, exhausted slumber.

The phone rang again, an irritating alarm clock. To shut it up, he groped around until he found it and brought it to his ear. “Can it wait?”

“It’s the roof! It caved in, just crashed through the ceiling, and now it’s all over the floor in big chunks. Jakey let out a huge scream when it fell. You should have heard it, it sounded like an earthquake. What am I going to do? I can’t afford a roofer, and it’s supposed to pour tomorrow, and I can’t put the house on the market with a huge gaping hole in the ceiling, and we have to sleep here, and I don’t even want to lose my house, and all my furniture will get soaked, it’s like living outside, except with shards of roof tile in my living room, and oh, Will, you have to come over and fix this, you have to, please, you have to, I know Darcy won’t let you back in, but there has to be some way, I don’t know where else to turn, and you’re my brother. Please.” Sheila finally ran out of steam and just stopped.
 

Will was wide awake now. “How big is this hole? Can you measure it? Tell me exactly what it looks like. Take me through it step by step.”
 

With something specific to focus on, Sheila stopped hyperventilating. But she was right—this would need to be fixed before the next rainstorm. Which meant today. But after the sullen way he acted last night and the things he said, what were the odds that Darcy would be willing to tag along to his sister’s? And if he left her behind, that was it. Game over.
 

He went to the bedroom to get ready. He’d better take his laptop with him. And his razor. And his toothbrush. And hell, his expensive organic mattress too. Darcy would claim it as her own for sure.
 

Speaking of the mattress, where was Darcy? She wasn’t in the living room, and the bathroom door was wide open, the bathroom clearly empty. The bed looked well slept in. Actually, no. The bed looked like a wrestling match had taken place. Sheets were heaped on the floor, blankets twisted in a ropelike tangle, and pillows scattered across the bed in a random array. He felt a savage twinge. If he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep on the couch, at least she’d suffered an equally wretched fate in here.
 

He changed quickly, but even so, Darcy walked into the room while he was still partly undressed. She looked, blushed, looked away, looked back. Finally met his gaze.
 

As calmly as possible, he pulled his pants on and zipped them up. She could look her fill. This was who he was. And they had, after all, had sex. No point in denying it any longer. He wanted her, craved another round in bed with her, but that wasn’t going to happen.
 

His keys were on his dresser, unused in days. He slipped them into his jeans pocket, seeing Darcy’s eyes widen at the gesture.
 

“Going somewhere?”
 

“Sheila’s roof caved in.”

“Oh no!” She looked genuinely upset, her mouth scrunched up in a concerned moue.
 

“It’s just a hole, not the whole roof. But it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so she needs me to fix it.”

“Of course.” Darcy knelt by the bed and fished out a pair of glossy red heeled shoes, then seemed to rethink her choice and went for sneakers. Glittery purple sneakers, but sneakers nevertheless.
 

“You’ll come with me?”

“Of course.”
 

He sagged in relief. So simple, the way she said it, but so deeply, profoundly new. A fragile trust.
 

They left the house together. She walked beside him in the morning sunlight, almost companionable, like roommates. Like friends.
 

In the parking lot, she went for her car. Naturally, she had a sleek, black, German gas hound with an umpteen-horsepower engine. When she realized he wasn’t following, she gave him an inquisitive look. He gestured with his head toward his pickup truck. “Better for tools, and I’ll have to stop for lumber and tar.”
 

“Oh. Right.”
 

But Darcy still stood there on the concrete, looking uncharacteristically awkward and shy. So he opened the passenger door and waved his hand as if ushering a royal personage into her processional carriage. She climbed up into the cab.
 

Feeling slightly foolish, he closed the door for her. She looked absurdly pleased.

Chapter Nineteen

Sheila’s house was a mere six-minute drive from the condo but couldn’t have been in a more different world. Instead of hugging the rugged, starkly beautiful coastline, it squatted at the scrubby base of the foothills on a barren street with a few scraggly palm trees and a row of midcentury modern ranch houses. Darcy could almost see the ghosts of ’50s’ housewives in aprons driving station wagons with faux wood paneling down the deathly quiet street.
 

Still, some of those homes were pretty cool, weren’t they, with glass walls and open spaces and such?
 

This one wasn’t. The stucco walls were stained dark with rainwater and dust, and the window ledges crackled under too many coats of paint.
 

Darcy followed Will to the front door, past neatly planted rows of impatiens and rosemary. Sheila clearly tried her best with this poor place. She just needed money to do a proper job.
 

The front door swung open, and Sheila stepped out. “Thank God you came so fast! I—” She stopped as she saw Darcy. “Oh. I guess you had to come, huh, what with your situation. Did you bring your computer? I can set you up on the couch, but you’ll have to tune out the boys until I can get them off to school. It’s pretty zooey in the mornings.” She laughed, wry. “Any time, really.”
 

Darcy frowned in realization. When she’d left the condo with Will, she hadn’t even thought about work. Even though this was a weekday, thus a work day. She was, in effect, playing hooky. How disconcerting. “I’ll find something to amuse myself.”

Inside, Will whistled, looking up at the hole in the ceiling.
 

“See?” Sheila snagged Jakey, who was toddling past, and hoisted him onto her hip. “That’s why I panicked.”

Will nodded, grim. “I’ll need to go to the lumberyard for a few things. Can you keep the boys out of the house while I work?”

“They’re off to school in a bit. Alex! Are you changed yet?” Sheila headed off down the hall toward the bedrooms, still carrying Jakey on her hip.
 

Will glanced at Darcy. “It’s going to be a boring morning. We should swing by the condo and pick up your computer.” Without waiting for an answer, he headed toward the front door.
 

Darcy hurried after him. “You’re going to do the whole job by yourself?”

“Sheila’s tied up with the kids and can’t afford to hire extra hands, and I need to conserve my money in case…” He trailed off. The implication was clear: in case she didn’t move out, in case he needed to pay a lawyer, in case their battle got even messier.
 

His footsteps crunched on the gravel ahead of her, and he swung his truck door open. Darcy came around the other side and climbed up into the cab while Will started the engine. As she yanked the seat-belt strap across her chest, Darcy paused, her hand on the clasp. “What if I help?”

He let the engine die. “If you what?”
 

“I could use the break from work-work-work, all-work-and-no-play. It might be pleasant to spend time outside for a change.” She slid the lock into place.
 

Will eyed her suspiciously as he restarted the engine and navigated the truck out of the driveway, heading back toward the center of town. “You realize it’s hard labor. You’d get your hands dirty.” He glanced at her manicured nails. “Tear up those pretty fingernails.”

Okay, now she was pissed. “You think I can’t do it? You think I’m too much of a desk jockey to get out there and do manly man work? Or is it that you don’t trust yourself around me?”
 

The truck swerved as Will gripped the wheel between suddenly tight fists. Ha. She’d gotten to him. “I trust myself just fine. Look, if you want to do it, I could use the help. Just warning you, it’s not like working out in the gym. No climate control, no carefully calibrated exercise machines that tweak one muscle at a time. It’s real work.”

“Fine.” She jutted her chin up, defiant.
 

“Fine.” She was surprised to see an amused glint in his eyes. He seemed warmer than he had all morning.
 

The errand took longer because Will didn’t believe in patronizing big-box stores. They stopped at a lumberyard first, then a hardware store in town, then a second hardware store in Santa Maria. Darcy pulled her smartphone out of her pocket half a dozen times to check on email, text messages, and deal with general work-related mayhem. Things weren’t going so well back at the office. Johanna hadn’t come in yet, and Thora was fielding calls about the Deep Velvet Cream sample packet, the one that was supposed to ship tomorrow. Thora knew nothing about it, so she kept texting with panicked questions.
 

As Darcy typed with her thumbs into her phone, she could feel the disapproval radiating from Will’s side of the truck, but he didn’t say a word. It wasn’t until they got back to the house that he spoke, his voice flat. “No phones on the roof. Think you can handle that?”

In a patented Dougherty move Darcy was beginning to think of as Frustrating Maneuver Number Fourteen, Will hopped out of the truck cab without waiting for a response and went to the truck’s flatbed to unload the tools and lumber. Darcy stayed in the passenger seat, finishing off a text to Mathias, her coworker most closely tied to the Deep Velvet project. Well, aside from the MIA Johanna.
 

“I could use a hand here.” Will sounded irritable.
 

Darcy shoved her phone in her pocket and climbed out of the cab.

~*~

He didn’t think she’d really do it. Darcy Jennings? She of the omnipresent laptop-and-phone combination? She who would rather work out on an elliptical machine than go for a walk in nature? That selfsame woman was now clambering up the ladder, then gingerly creeping from the top of the ladder to the shale-tiled roof. Lucky for her, the ranch house design meant a low-lying, gently sloped rooftop, or she might fall off, overbalancing out of fear.