What's Yours is Mine (33 page)

Tim flushed. “It’s not her condo anymore.”

Brianna smacked Will on the leg. “Did you push her out?” She smacked him again.
 

Will shook his head. “I asked her to live with me.”

Megan looked delighted. “I knew it!”

Darcy frowned. “He asked me to cohabit the condo. Different altogether.”

“No, I—” He started but stopped himself. This was not the time or place.
 

Hope flared in her eyes. “Yes?”

Faye and Henrietta—the ones who had given him the cactus—popped out of their condo. Megan waved them over. “Better come here, Tim’s up to no good.”

Tim looked exasperated. “Megan, please. I’m just doing my job.”

“Will, good to see you,” Henrietta said. “I hear you’re in a bit of a bind.”

Faye grinned at Darcy. “Never a dull moment with you, is there? Please do stay, I could use the entertainment. Don’t let Tim bully you.”

“I’m not bullying anyone.” The tip of Tim’s nose was turning red.
 

Darcy stood there chewing her lip. Will couldn’t tell if she was suppressing a laugh or a sob.
 

A few more people emerged from their condos, including Jennifer. She tripped over to them, for once not sashaying but looking somber.
   

Henrietta extended her hand to Darcy. “Hi, I’m Henrietta, Faye’s wife. I’d say welcome to the community, but I gather you’re not staying.”

Will interrupted. “She’s staying.”

Darcy looked at him. “Am I?”

Tim said, “No, she’s not. And neither are you.”

Ignoring Tim, Will inhaled deeply, gathering his courage. “Do you want to stay?” He took her hands in his.

She looked down at their joined hands. “What are you asking me?”
 

He could only see the whorl of dark hair at the top of her head. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t tell what she was thinking. But her fingers trembled in his, ever so slightly. And that was enough.
 

Despite the dozen or so onlookers, he had an audience of one. He had to get it right this time. “Will you live with me?”

~*~

Darcy kept her gaze down, staring at their linked hands. He had long fingers, neatly trimmed nails. How very Will. She didn’t dare look up at his face. “What exactly are you asking?”

Around them, everyone was hushed. Even Tim was quiet. It was a strange outside-of-time moment. Being around Will seemed to bring these on, as if all his meditating and yoga and tinkling music truly did reach into the inner workings of the universe and stop time itself.
 

She could feel herself breathing. Could hear a bird calling sharply to another, hear wind and water and the sound of a community shifting from one foot to the other in nervous anticipation.

Will’s voice had a tremor in it. “I’m asking if you’ll be with me. Because if you moved out, there would be a Darcy-size hole in the condo, and I only know one infuriating, complicated, unforgettable woman who could possibly fill it.”
 

She stepped in, tilted her head up as he too stepped closer and tilted his head just right, and their arms came around each other, and they kissed. A satisfying but sedate kiss, taking into consideration their G-rated audience.
 

Brianna whistled, a big wolf whistle she shouldn’t know how to perform. Megan shushed her.
 

Darcy broke away from the kiss but kept hold of Will’s hand, feeling that reassurance as she stood in the shadow of his strong physical presence.
 

She tapped Tim on the shoulder. “Keys, please.”

He hesitated.

Megan gave him the evil eye. “Your brother would be embarrassed if he knew you’d turned into such an ass.” Right.
 
Megan’s missing husband was Tim’s brother.
 

The accusation obviously stung. Flushing, Tim dropped the keys in Darcy’s hands.
 

A sigh went around the onlookers. Darcy gazed around at her neighbors and smiled. She was home. Even Jennifer was smiling at her, though with an undercurrent of sadness.
 

Then Darcy glanced at Will. The promise in his gaze made her quicken her step to the front door.
 

She ceremoniously unlocked the door and swung it open, then swooped her arm in invitation. Will looked around at the gathered group. “Barbecue on our back deck tomorrow for the whole complex.” He glanced at her, a little sheepish. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Only if you do the cooking.”

Megan laughed.
 

Will grinned. “Of course.”

He stepped into the condo. Darcy took a deep breath and looked at Megan, Brianna, Jennifer, Faye, and Henrietta. “Thank you all.” She nodded at Tim. “Even you.”

Then she went inside her home.
 

As soon as she crossed the threshold, a nervous, anticipatory, this-is-it shiver went through her. They were alone again. But everything was different.

Will walked the perimeter of the living room, closing all the curtains. Afternoon light filtered through the cream-colored linen, softly illuminating the room. Then he sat down on her red couch, patting the spot next to him invitingly.

She perched on the edge, nervous about what he might say.
 

He looked so serious, his blue eyes dark in this light. “I don’t love easily. I never have. After my father died, I think I sealed myself shut. Maybe I would have gotten over it after a while, but my mother leaving was like a hammer blow. Like Sheila and I weren’t good enough, didn’t matter enough to stick around. I swore then—remember, I was only fourteen—but I swore that I’d never let anyone close enough to hurt me. And then watching Sheila get her heart broken again and again just confirmed my belief that love wasn’t worth the pain. She has terrible taste in men, granted, but she was so needy, so hollow.”
 

Darcy could feel her heart pounding. Was he going to tell her that he could never love her, that it wasn’t her, it was him? She mentally gathered herself to get up and walk out that door no matter how hard it would be, no matter how humiliating to walk past all those neighbors again. Because she was worth more than that. She couldn’t stick around on hope and maybe.
 

“I want you to understand. You’re not getting a great deal here. I’ve never done this before. Sure, I’ve had relationships, but I’ve always kept an emotional distance. I’ve never even given a woman my key, let alone lived with her. I’m not very good at this being-in-love stuff. I’ll probably forget Valentine’s Day and—”

But that was as far as he got, because Darcy, grinning widely, flung herself at him, assaulting him with kisses. His cheeks, his chin, his lips.
 

Will looked bewildered. “What? What did I say?”

“You love me. You’re in love with me.” She could feel the tears well up.
 

“Well, of course I am. Didn’t you realize that? Nobody has ever made me as crazy mad as you do. You wind me up, you make me feel, well, everything. There’s no such thing as detached with you around. And you’re—you’re amazing. Strong and brave and smart and willing to be yourself, to change and grow into yourself before my eyes over the course of just five days. How could I not love you?” He paused, shaking his head. “Don’t you know that?”

She smiled and smiled and kissed him. “I do now. But you taught me by example, you know. I never had a role model, Will. Nobody like your father in my life. My dad, he sees every encounter as a campaign. Conquer the world and everyone in it. And Stan, well, he’s pretty good at making dark sound like light and bad sound like good, isn’t he? You’ve made me want to be a better person.”

He kissed her. “You were better than them already; you just didn’t know it yet.”

This kiss quickly got much deeper. She felt wide open to Will, and felt him too, responding to all of her, connected emotionally as well as physically. No holding back.

Darcy was soon grateful for the closed curtains. This was going to work out just fine.
   

After a suitable, delicious interval, they sat together, naked and entwined, and browsed the Internet for a new couch. Organic cotton, comfortable looking, with clean lines. And very well sprung.
 

Author Note

Thank you for reading
What’s Yours is Mine
. I hope you enjoyed it.

The town of Santa Genoveva is a fictional melding of various towns on the California coast between Santa Barbara and San Simeon.
 

The chemical triclosate may be fictional, but it bears an unfortunate resemblance to real chemicals in our beauty products.

~*~

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~*~

Excerpt from Draw Me In

Fledgling artist Raven fled her home in Maine last night, taking a long distance bus down to New York City. She’s still finding her way.
 

Finn discovered last night that his accountant (and sometimes-but-not-really lover) was embezzling from his artisanal fermented foods business. He’s not in a good mood.
 

Raven and Finn haven’t met yet. They’re about to.
 

The afternoon sun shone directly in Raven’s eyes as she pedaled her new bike up Nassau. She was reasonably sure she was still in Brooklyn—which turned out to be a big sprawl of a borough—but the tall buildings of Downtown had given way to fancy brownstones, which then gave way to row houses with signs in Polish on all the shop awnings. Her knees were scraped from the time she’d fallen off her bike avoiding a semi barreling too fast off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Her lungs were gritty and her eyes stung from dust and car exhaust.
 

She felt exhilarated.

She was here. She was doing it. She’d landed a job on the very first day. When she’d walked into the courier place, she’d expected to face a request for references and a grilling on the city’s layout and proper messenger etiquette. Instead, the dispatcher had asked if she could rustle up a bicycle on short notice and given her the gig. Conditional on doing a good job for the first week. But she was good at memorizing maps and navigating treacherous byways. She’d be fine.
 

Backwoods Maine was light years away. Jimmy was a fading memory. She was a bike messenger in New York City. She’d make the rest work too. After all, she was here.
 

Raven’s next destination smelled curiously like brine and vinegar. Brine could be explained by the East River half a block away. She could see the glint of water past the fence that marked the end of the stubby dead-end street. But vinegar?
 

She parked her bike by the curb, wrapping the chain around a streetlamp, pulled out the biggest box from her saddlebag, and went over to the open truck bay, the bag clunking against her thigh with every step.

Three people loaded boxes into the back of a truck emblazoned with the name Finn’s Fermentation Factory.
 

The brine-and-vinegar sharpness was stronger here, mingled with dill and oregano and some other spices she couldn’t name. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten for hours. She’d skipped lunch and might need to skip dinner too. She’d spent a large chunk of her final salon paycheck on a used blue bike, striped helmet, and canvas saddlebag, leaving too few dollars in her slim wallet.
 

The workers were staring at her. The stranger in their midst.

She glanced at the box in her hands. “I’m looking for Finn McKenna.”
 

“I’ll take it,” said a tall, elegant black man. “Finn’s busy.” He glanced at another man, who grimaced back at him.

“This says he has to sign it himself.”

“On your head, then. He’s not in a good mood. He had to sic the cops on his girlfriend today.”
 

The other guy smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Shut up, Nate. She’s not his girlfriend.” It seemed affectionate. Strange place.
 

“Not anymore, that’s for sure.” Nate waved Raven upstairs. “He’s in the kitchen on the second floor. Or the office on the third. Ask if you can’t find your way. Get in, get out, don’t feed the bear. He bites.”

The kitchen was an industrial-size room filled with barrels, huge cauldrons of steaming liquid, rows of large ceramic pots, and big glass jars on long steel counters. Half a dozen people worked in here. All wearing aprons, their hair tied back. Soft jazz played over loudspeakers. The scents of vinegar and sauerkraut, spices and sharpness, were strongest in here, and no wonder. Someone crunched a pickle; someone else picked up a mug of something fizzy and gulped it down before returning to her task.
 

Raven scanned the workers. “Is one of you Finn?”

“He’s upstairs, I think.”
 

Up the dark center staircase to the third level. To the right, a forbiddingly closed door. To the left, a door cracked open, light spilling out invitingly.
 

Raven went into the room to the left.
 

It was empty. She almost turned back. She was on a schedule, and she was running way behind. But she paused. Because this room was everything she’d dreamed New York would be when she’d sat in the salon painting French manicures on the nails of matrons from Connecticut visiting Maine for their summer holidays.