The Harder They Fall (13 page)

It was long past time for her to learn about sex. And here she had a man all hot and bothered, and he still managed to resist. That wasn’t exactly good for her ego.

“Darcy?”

She jumped. “Yes?”

“Why me?” he asked, without turning to her.

“I . . . don’t know.”

“I know that I started all of this. I know I kissed you first. And I know that I pushed you at the health club. But why, after twenty-five years, are you so willing to have sex with a man you don’t even like?”

“I didn’t say I don’t like you.”

He laughed. “You’ve made your feelings fairly clear the last few weeks. There’s no love lost here. You and I have diametrically opposing goals.”

“That’s got nothing to do with this.” She felt, rather than saw, him stiffen beside her. Her heart pinched, as her earlier suspicions came back to her. She straightened and turned to him. “Or does it?”

“I beg your pardon?” he said, straightening as well.

“Is that what all of this sudden attention is about?”

He hesitated, just long enough for Darcy to consider throwing her wine in his face.

He shrugged eloquently. “I’m not going to lie and say I’m not hoping to get you to listen to D.I.’s proposal, Darcy. Of course I want you to keep an open mind about that. But when I kissed you that first time, it was in response to
you
as a
beautiful woman in distress, who I very much wanted to comfort and kiss.

“Today was the same way. I respond to you because I’m attracted to you. I would love nothing better than to pick you up and carry you to bed right now. That has nothing to do with you being a Welham and everything to do with you being a woman who turns me on.”

Either he was an extremely accomplished liar, or he was utterly sincere. Darcy desperately wanted it to be the latter. And as he gazed unblinkingly into her eyes, she decided to believe him. Relief flooded through her, and she gave a shaky laugh. “I’m glad.”

His teeth flashed like white beacons in the dark of the night. “Don’t ever discount your appeal as a woman, Darcy. I think you’re sexy as hell. And your last name has nothing to do with that.”

“Kiss me,” she demanded hoarsely. “Now.”

He yanked her against him with a force that was thrilling. His mouth came down hard on hers and, Darcy, by now a seasoned veteran of two long and thorough French kisses, opened her lips to his immediately.

Their tongues mated. Darcy went weak all over again. By contrast, he seemed to go taut and gather strength. His hands moved over her body more insistently, bringing it to exquisite life.

Michael circled her waist with one arm, and cupped her head with his free hand. He tore his mouth from hers and started trailing hot kisses across her cheek, then down her throat. He bent her back as he sensitized her skin with his teeth and tongue.

She had a sense of hanging over some precipice, and vaguely realized she was hanging out over the railing. But his hold on her was so tight, she didn’t feel any fear. All she felt was him, murmuring words she couldn’t decipher against her throat.

As if through some distant horn, Darcy recognized the sound of a woman’s squeal and then an exchange between two angry men. She ignored it all, threading her fingers through his thick, unruly hair.

She moaned as the sensations he created on her neck traveled with lightning-bolt speed through her body. She was lost. Completely lost. An ache bloomed between her legs. One she desperately wanted him to ease.

Three things suddenly penetrated her desire-fogged mind. One was a dull thud, coming from right above her. The second was Michael’s body, jerking. He stumbled back toward the door, taking her with him. The third was the crash of glass against the brick outer wall of her apartment.

She looked up at Michael. His eyes were glazed, but not with passion. He grabbed on to her shoulders, more to steady himself than her, she suspected. Then his hands dropped, he wobbled once, and crumpled to the concrete floor.

A lawn mower with a muffler problem was running rampant through Michael’s skull. He kept his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he slowly regained consciousness, knowing that to let light in would be a serious mistake. He tried to acclimate himself through his other senses.

The antiseptic smell was unmistakable. He was in a hospital. Occasional droplets of water spattered on his right hand and forearm.

As his head slowly cleared, he suddenly realized that the racket sawing through his gray matter wasn’t a lawn mower at all, but instead was the sound of someone loudly blowing a nose. As soon as the racket stopped, someone took his hand.

“Please, please, please,” that someone whispered.

Darcy.

The events of that night came back in hammering spurts. The cruise ship, the drive to Darcy’s, the kisses . . . the explosion at the back of his skull. Something had hit him in the head. Hard. And it felt, at the moment, that whatever it had been was still pounding behind his eyelids and at his temples.

Slowly, by degrees, he allowed his eyes to open. The light was a blinding spear straight through his brain.

“Michael?” Darcy whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Unfortunately,” he croaked, closing his eyes again.

“Oh, thank God!” she said, squeezing his hand hard enough to break bone. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“I’m
sorry” seemed to be Darcy’s mantra. If he remembered correctly, she hadn’t had anything in her hands with which to bonk him on the head. Which meant that whatever had hit him had come from above. So what the hell was she apologizing for?

He cracked one eye open. “Darcy?”

“Yes, it’s
me. You’re in Fairfax Hospital. They say you probably just have a slight concussion, but you should be fine soon. They’re going to take tests tonight.”

“How soon is soon?” Michael asked, wondering how long he’d have to live with the pulsing pain in his head.

“I don’t know. They want to keep you overnight for observation, but if it’s what they think, you should be able to go home tomorrow.”

He looked at her. Her eyes were pink-tinged, her nose as red as Rudolph’s, her golden lashes spiked with tears.

He’d never known any woman could look so beautiful when she looked so awful.

As gently as he could, he pried Darcy’s hand off his. “What happened?”

“You were hit with a beer bottle.”

“From the party?”

“Y-yes,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “And . . . and it’s
all my fault
!” she whispered.

She started crying again, softly, but the sound was the sound jackhammering between his temples. Yet the pain in his head had nothing on the pain in his chest. Nothing on earth bothered him more than a woman’s tears.

“Please don’t cry,” he pleaded. “It’s not your fault, Darcy.”

“Yes it is. It’s always my fault.”

“You’re not the one who hit me.”

“It might as well have been me,” she whispered miserably. “If I could have gotten you into bed, then we wouldn’t have needed fresh air and we wouldn’t have been kissing on the balcony and you wouldn’t have . . . wouldn’t have been hurt.”

With logic like that, Michael felt Darcy could probably start a whole new field of science. He considered asking her to raise the head of his bed, but thought better of it.

Gingerly, he turned his head toward the sound of her soft sobs. “Darcy, please don’t cry!”

She made a pitiful attempt at stifling her sniffles. Leaning over him, she caressed his jaw, which, he had to admit, felt rather good. He covered her hand with his, just to keep it on his face.

“Thanks for taking care of me,” he said softly.

Her hiccup sounded surprised. “You’re welcome.”

The squeak of rubber soles on flooring reverberated through his head like screeching tires. Darcy moved away, and a nurse who’d probably grown up with America’s founding fathers took her place.

“Conscious, are we?”

Not giving him time to answer, she pried his eye wider open and shone a small light in it. His head screamed at the invasion, but he gritted his teeth to keep from crying out.

The old bat nodded and straightened. “Pupils responding nicely.”

Michael refrained from responding not-so-nicely. “Can you raise the head of the bed a little?”

The nurse hit a button, and Michael’s head slowly rose. Darcy came into his line of sight, wringing her hands at the foot of the bed. He smiled at her, and she tentatively smiled back.

“I want to go home,” he told the nurse.

“Take it up with the doctor.” She turned to Darcy, her hair shimmering a painful blue under the fluorescent light. “Five more minutes, young lady.”

Then she squeaked out of the room.

“Come here, Darcy.”

She came up beside him.

Michael took her hand. “Stop blaming yourself.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Yes, you can.”

She looked everywhere but into his eyes. “Can I tell you about my senior prom?”

Michael started to nod, only to wince. “I have no idea why, but sure.”

“Brad Fontaine asked me to go with him.”

“Who was Brad Fontaine?”

“He was captain of the football team. Probably the most popular boy in school.”

“He also had very good taste.”

She shook her head. “He asked me on a dare. He had a bet with his buddies that he could survive a date with me.”

Michael’s heart constricted painfully. For some reason, he had the feeling this story was going to piss him off.

She finally met his gaze. Her eyes had dried, but there was a lifetime of hurt in them. She sighed softly. “The night was like a dream for me. I’d always had a secret crush on him, but always knew he was way out of my league.

“We were standing by the punch bowl, and all of his friends kept coming over and saying all of these strange things about bets and stuff. When Brad went to the rest room, Sara Jo Simms came over. Sara Jo was Brad’s ex-girlfriend, and she’d been giving me nasty looks all night long. She told me all about the bet.”

Dammit!
How could kids be so cruel to one another? Michael thought of his own youth, and felt almost guilty for the ease with which he’d made it through school. Always having been one of the tallest, most athletic, and academically successful students, he’d never been the brunt of hurtful pranks.

“I was so embarrassed,” Darcy continued. “Everyone knew but me. I should have known it was too good to be true. When Brad came back, I was shaking. He asked me to dance. All I wanted to do was go home.” She forked her fingers through the hair at her forehead, pushing it back from her face. “Someone came up behind me and pinched my . . . bottom. I was so startled I dropped my punch.” Her head shook sadly. “Brad slipped in the punch and broke his ankle. Because of that, he couldn’t play football his freshman year in college. Not only that, but he lost fifty dollars, because he had to pay ten of his buddies five dollars each.”

“Personally, I think the son of a bitch got what he deserved,” Michael said. “So what’s your point?”

“I went to see him in the hospital. He was so angry! He told me that someone should lock me up and throw away the key, because I was nothing but a disaster waiting to happen.”

Michael called the jerk a few more choice names. Darcy met his eyes, and he flushed as a memory returned.
“Well, Darcy Wel-Wellington, you are a one-woman disaster zone.”
Her look told him she was remembering those words, too.

“Listen, Darcy—”

“No!” She pulled her hand from his. “Don’t you see? He was right. You were both right. I wasn’t meant to have a relationship because, if I do, I’ll end up hurting someone.”

“That’s not true!”

She stepped back. Michael wanted to reach out and grab her, pull her on top of him and kiss her senseless.

Darcy’s chin came up, determination written in every rigid line of her jaw. “Today was a mistake. I’m not going to let this go on, because I couldn’t stand it if something even worse than this—” she waved at his bed “—happened to you because of me.”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“I’m not.” She stepped back again, nearly knocking over an IV pole. “I’m taking care of the bill. Goodbye, Michael.”

“No!”