Compulsively Mr. Darcy (5 page)

His response was emphatic. “No. I don't need any.”

“Somehow it doesn't surprise me you'd say that. In your case, you'd be fine with strong, over-the-counter painkillers.” She gave him some additional recommendations on what he could do to treat his migraines should they worsen, though she voiced her suspicion he'd do nothing.

“Yes, you're right about that,” he agreed, his eyes smiling warmly at her. “I don't have a brain tumor?”

She tried not to think of how attractive his mouth appeared when the corners were lifted with humor. “Given the number of years you've had the headaches—sorry, since Mr. Bingley thought you had the headaches—I doubt it. You'll have to give another reason for your evil ways.”

He laughed out loud, looking remarkably different from the man who had entered the room. Flustered, she coughed and briefly turned away to compose herself before she concluded the visit. On his way out the door, he paused. “I'm sorry for being difficult earlier… today and well, that day at the hospital. I'm afraid I have some anger toward the medical profession.”

Her heart tugged at the brief glimpse of sadness she saw in his eyes. A moment later, his face was an imperturbable mask. Gently, she tried to ease the moment with humor again. “I don't blame you for feeling that way if you had some bad experiences. Luckily, we're done for now and you're safe from any unprofessional conduct on my part.”

He laughed again.

Somehow, making Mr. Darcy laugh was addictive. She teased, “I know what your defect is, Mr. Darcy. You don't laugh at yourself enough.”

“And yours”—his eyes twinkled—“is laughing too much at me for precisely that particular defect.” With that, he finally left.

She closed the door and leaned her back against it so she wouldn't be tempted to follow him down the hall. The warm sound of Mr. Darcy's rich laughter had made her toes curl. “Charles Bingley is a lucky whore!”

Crouched low to observe a small crab crawling on the wet sand, Elizabeth saw the pair of running shoes a split second before she heard the deep male voice.

“Hello, Dr. Bennet.”

Oh
my!
Mr. Darcy stood four feet away, practically undressed in a maroon and gray Harvard T-shirt and black running shorts, compared to his usual slacks and buttoned shirts.

He said, “I didn't mean to startle you.”

“I'm not startled. Are you running? Jane and I are taking advantage of the beautiful sand and sun of China Beach. She's over there reading on the lounge chair. I can never sit still, though. I decided to explore. Oh, and call me Elizabeth, please. I don't have my white coat on, Mr. Darcy.” Out of breath from babbling too fast, she pointed to her own white T-shirt with her alma mater's Cal logo on it.

“Only if you'll call me William.”

“What's the
F
in F.D. for?”

A slight tinge appeared on his cheeks.

Why, he's shy.
The thought delighted her. “Fine, don't tell me. Though I have to admit now that, had I known your first initial was
F
when I first saw you at the hospital, your ears would have burned something fierce that day hearing some four-letter words.” When he laughed, not wanting the dimples to disappear, she continued, “I wouldn't want to be called Freddy or Frankie either.”

“Almost as bad. It's Fitzwilliam, my mother's maiden name.”

“Do you run often?” How lame. Hadn't she already asked him about running? She was losing her marbles around the man.

“Every morning if I can. You're not usually out this early, Elizabeth.”

She liked the sound of her name from his mouth. A soft breeze tousled his hair. When the wind blew, she smelled the musky, spicy woods scent mixed with the sea air in his sweat. She dug her bare feet into the wet sand and let the coolness of the water seep through her toes
. I need to chill down from Mr. Hottie here.
“No, I haven't been able to, though it's my favorite time of day, getting up with the sun.”

“Have you got to work today? Have you got patients scheduled?”

“You mean do I have any men on my schedule who are going to give me a hard time?” she asked, amused to see a deeper flush on his neck.

“You see quite a few men? I mean male patients?”

She allowed herself a regretful sigh. Of course, he would ask only about the men. “I see whoever wants an appointment. But now that you mention it, I seem to be treating more men than women here. Most of the complaints are rather minor except for one gentleman who wasted my time with his nonexistent headaches.”

As she'd hoped, he laughed. “You're busy today, then?”

“No. It's my day off.”

He smiled. “If you don't have any set plans, Bingley and I are thinking of going snorkeling. Perhaps you and your sister could join us?”

She pondered the invitation. That sounded fun. It shouldn't cost too much with her employee discount. Oops. One problem.

“We'll feed you also, afterwards. Or perhaps we could bring a snack along for you, since it might be a few hours.” He gave her a sideways glance. “Though, I'm sure you would never get cranky and threaten anyone when you happen to miss a meal or two.”

Pleased he had teased her, she laughed. “No, it's not that. I don't know how to swim. It's embarrassing, but I've never learned. I'm actually afraid of the water. Very afraid.”

“Oh? I'm sorry.”

Touched at the concern in his voice, she revealed, “A bad experience. Teenage lifeguard threw me in the pool when I was three as a way to teach me to swim.”

“We could do something else?”

“No. I'll come along and enjoy myself on the boat while you guys do the underwater thing. This is perfect! I want Jane to do some snorkeling but she hasn't wanted to go alone.”

“Great, I shall make arrangements.” He gave her a wide smile.

She pressed the tip of her tongue to the back of her teeth at seeing his dimples again and his laugh lines. “Super.”

She gave him her room number and they agreed to meet once he had the details worked out. They then parted.

After a couple steps, he turned back. “Don't worry, Elizabeth, about not knowing how to swim. I'll make sure that you'll be safe.”

***

Exiting through the opened door, Darcy nodded to the smiling doorman and wondered if the man had noticed the eager anticipation in his gait. He had arranged for a car to take Elizabeth and him on a short sightseeing trip. Since their snorkeling excursion a few days ago, whenever they could, they spent time together. With her schedule completely free of patients, and after discovering he hadn't been out of the resort much, she was taking him to the Marble Mountains that day.

“Cyclo?”

Darcy paused.

A small Vietnamese man smiled at him. He pointed to the cyclo behind him and said something Darcy couldn't understand.

“No, No. I'm waiting for my friend.”

The man began to talk in a conversational manner.

Darcy couldn't decipher a word the man spoke. He wondered how to walk away politely. Spotting Elizabeth at a distance, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Elizabeth reached them, smiled at Darcy, and turned toward the cyclo driver. “Hello. I'm Lizzy. Are you busy today with many rides?” The driver responded and Elizabeth answered, “We go to Marble Mountain. Too far for cyclo.”

The cyclo driver spoke again and pointed at the ocean.

“Enjoy the beach. It's beautiful.” Elizabeth said good-bye.

Once they were settled in the backseat of a taxi and had given the driver their destination, Darcy asked, “How did you understand what he said?”

“What do you mean? He was speaking in English.”

Distracted by the view behind her of a passing bicycle carrying tied-up pigs, he didn't reply for a moment before he confessed, with some embarrassment, “I had a hard time.”

“I'm used to my aunt Mai's relatives back home. I learned to keep it simple. They don't have verb tenses or plurals. You don't say ‘He walks' but ‘he walk.' You don't say ‘I went to the market yesterday' but ‘I go market yesterday.' ‘Two apples' becomes ‘two apple'—details like that.”

“You're amazing.” He felt too shy to add she also fascinated him because she, naturally at ease in talking to people and with such simple grace, was the opposite of him. “Most of us arrogantly expect people to speak English clearly.”

She patted his arm. “You're not arrogant.”

He chuckled. “We both know very well that's not true. But I'm glad you don't hold a grudge.”

“In English, we use our tongue and our lips when we talk. Vietnamese is a tonal language, where the sounds come from the throat with each breath. That's why sounds like
sh
or
ch
are difficult. ‘Show' becomes ‘sew,' and ‘pushy' becomes…”

It took him a long moment before his mind supplied the word. His mouth opened.

She laughed. “You should see your face now.”

“You think it's funny to embarrass me, huh? Well, let's see if you still think it's funny if I do this.” He tried to tickle her. She laughed harder and squirmed.

He suddenly became aware of how close her soft, feminine body was to his. Her thigh pressed against his. Her gardenia scent announced its seductive presence. His breathing slowed. She stilled, as if she had also become aware of their nearness. The green in her eyes turned smoky and her lips parted slightly.

He bent his head…

Her face turned away at the last moment.

Mortified, he pulled back. He almost kissed her in broad daylight in the back of a car, with the taxi driver not two feet away, in the middle of a crowded city. He cleared his throat. “Elizabeth, I'm sorry—”

“For overreacting to a crude word I didn't even say by tickling me?” Her voice was its usual lighthearted tone. “I'll get you back, my sweet, when you least expect it.”

Glad she had easily smoothed the awkward moment, he followed her lead and started asking about the Marble Mountains.

She instantly became the tour guide and informed him the five summits that made up the Marble Mountains were named for the five elements: earth, water, metal, fire, and wood. “There are caverns we can explore and the mountains are really marble,” she assured him when they arrived at the site. “Come on, you can touch and see for yourself.”

He didn't like cramped space, but he couldn't let her disappear into the caverns without him.

Two Australian women kept bumping into him. Annoyed they kept him separated from Elizabeth during one narrow passage, he gave them his intimidating face to make them disappear.

On one mountain, they explored caves containing Buddhist relics, pagodas, and temples. They climbed the steep, narrow chimney caves to reach the summit, from which they had a panoramic view of the resort on China Beach and the old airbase. She said, “During the Vietnam War, the communist Vietnamese used the caves as hospitals. Our American forces didn't know how close the enemy was.”

Later, when she admired a jade bracelet, he wanted to buy it for her. She argued about his paying for it and insisted that he should save his money. He told her to hush and that he could afford the few dollars it actually cost without suffering financial hardship.

She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

He wanted to turn his face and press his lips to hers, but remembering her reaction in the car earlier, he restrained himself. He reached for her hand instead.

She gently removed her hand from his grasp. “Public displays of affection are frowned upon here. I shouldn't have even kissed you earlier on the cheek. I'd forgotten. Sorry.”

“No problem.” He smiled, happy she had forgotten the rules and had kissed him impulsively.

“If we were the same sex, we could hold hands and even share a hotel bed, but touching or kissing between a man and a woman is considered impolite, even if they're married.”

“You mean I can hold Bingley's hand in public or even share a bed with him in a room at any hotel here, but not with you or any woman I'm not married to?”

Instead of sharing his amusement as he'd expected, a strange expression crossed her face.

The rest of their time together that day, he found it difficult to recapture their earlier ease with each other. He couldn't figure out why or what he had said to have changed the tone of their interaction.

When they parted, however, she seemed to have recovered from what had bothered her and was back to her usual teasing self as she bid him good-bye.

“How was your outing with William?” Jane sat down next to her sister on the hotel bed.

Elizabeth's eyes moved from staring at the ceiling. “Great. Though, just like a little boy, he complained and pouted the whole time that he was too tall to be cramped into caves. I snapped a photo of him next to the large, marble Buddha statue to show him how small and insignificant he was next to a deity.”

Jane smiled, astounded at the description Elizabeth painted of the serious man Jane had met. He must show a different side in private with her sister. “I can't believe you guys are tourist buddies now. He even got you to snorkel. You never go into the water without panicking.”

“It wasn't bad with a life vest, and William holding on to me.”

“He's rather handsome.” Jane glanced at her sister. “I noticed he gets a lot of interested looks from women.”

“They're wasting their time. Today, two very attractive, flirty Australian girls were practically falling all over him, but he wasn't interested.”

“Perhaps he's not showing interest in these women because he's—”

“Because he's committed to Charles. They're adopting a baby together.”

“I might be wrong about that. We've spent a lot of time with them lately, and I've yet to hear either of them make a comment about the adoption.” Jane chose her next words carefully. “I'm also not certain they are together.”

“Of course they are. They're not talking about the adoption to us because they don't want to take advantage of you.”

“What makes you think they're more than friends?”

“I told you, the way William acted that day in the hospital. He was so upset Charles wasn't getting treated promptly. William paid the bills and everything. Charles told the nurse to give William the discharge instructions because William would make sure they would be followed. That's partner behavior.”

“I take care of your finances for you, pay your bills and your school loans,” Jane said. Though very frugal, her sister was notoriously terrible at organizing her finances, having no head for business or money. “I make sure you eat healthy, get enough sleep. When you get sick, I worry.”

“We're sisters. Two guys who are friends wouldn't act so nurturing. They'd just say, ‘Hey, man, sorry you got sick. Wanna beer?'” Elizabeth grabbed a pillow. “I don't know why, but all the nice guys I meet turn out to be gay.”

“I don't think that all the nice men you meet are gay; just the ones you let get close to you.”

Elizabeth's eyes met hers briefly before glancing away. “Perhaps.”

Whatever William Darcy's true sexual orientation was, Jane was certain she hadn't misread the gleam of male admiration in his eyes whenever he looked at Elizabeth, nor the sexual tension between him and her sister. Bluntly, Jane probed, “Are you attracted to William?”

Elizabeth hugged her pillow tight. “You know my track record. As usual, here I am again.”

Elizabeth's dating life had been rather nonexistent in the past few years, but now Jane wondered if there was some other reason besides the demands of her sister's career. “I know it's the family joke, but tell me, why do you have such a record? The three boyfriends you had all came out, and yet you never seemed upset about it.”

“I didn't plan for them to change teams, but I'm glad they're happy. They were all nice guys. Hussein is still a very good friend.”

“What about other guys? The ones who never made it past the first or second date?”

“Probably because they wanted to move faster than I liked.” Elizabeth pressed her face into her pillow.

Jane pulled the pillow away. “How fast?”

“I've never done it,” Elizabeth whispered with red cheeks then grabbed the pillow back and hid her face again.

Jane bit her lip to hide a smile. “There's nothing wrong with being a virgin. Perhaps at your age it's rare, but not unexpected.”

“I'm a rare breed: a virgin at twenty-eight.”

Jane rubbed her sister's back. “You'll meet the right guy and it will be very special. Actually, I'm rather envious that you still have that to look forward to.”

“Please, don't be. I'm rather embarrassed I'm the oldest virgin in the family.” Elizabeth lifted her face. “I'm not sure about Lydia, but I know Mary and Kitty aren't. They asked me to write them prescriptions for birth control.”

“Considering some of the explicit questions you ask your patients about their sexual histories,” Jane chuckled, “they'd die if they knew they were answering and getting advice from a virgin.”

“I don't usually ask for a play-by-play, you know,” Elizabeth said. “About William, I have these thoughts about him and these urges that aren't… well, I shouldn't.”

“Why not? There's nothing wrong with feeling that way about a man, especially a handsome and sexy guy like William Darcy.”

Elizabeth leaned eagerly toward Jane. “He makes you feel that way too? It's not just me?”

“I suspect Mr. Darcy makes a lot of women and men feel that way. Though, I wouldn't say he's made as big of an impression on me as he obviously has on you.”

“You don't have the urge to weave your fingers in his hair? Run your hands down his bare legs? Or drown in his dimples?”

“Uh… no.” Jane coughed, amused. Her sister had it bad.

***

Elizabeth woke up early the next morning. Moving quietly to not wake Jane, she made her way to the tiny balcony overlooking a garden. She wished her room had an ocean view. It would comfort her to face a vast body of water and be reminded she was but an insignificant thing in this universe.

Her thoughts turned to William, probably running now. She pictured him, hair ruffled from the wind, Harvard T-shirt stained dark with sweat, and strong, muscular, tanned legs moving rapidly below his black running shorts. She resisted the urge to make her way to the beach on the offhand chance of catching a glimpse of him.

Was her sister right in her comment last night? Did Elizabeth only let “safe” men get close to her?

Unbidden, an old memory of herself at sixteen surged forth. Her stomach tightened. She'd graduated from high school early, but looking back, she saw now that she was too young, too naive, too inexperienced about life to have begun college at sixteen.

She had answered the ad that first year, when she was first interested in archeology. The professor needed a student assistant to catalog his collection of artifacts, and there was the hint of possibly accompanying his field team out on an archeological dig. It was this hint of travel that made her take the job.

She never saw it coming. No, that wasn't quite true. There were signs, but she didn't know how to read them. She had dismissed her unease.

Until that one day, when he surprised her. Luckily, nothing happened. Hearing the sound of her jeans being unzipped had snapped her out of her shock. Repulsed at being the object of the old man's desire, she had fought him off and ran. He didn't follow. For a long while afterward, she had recurrent nightmares of fleeing.

Since then, she had been shying away from being intimate with men. Dating safe men had been a shield. Men like Hussein were definite shields. Though she loved Hussein's
joie
de
vivre
and his absurd sense of humor, she was never physically attracted to him.

William, she smiled wryly, couldn't really be accused of having
joie
de
vivre
or an absurd sense of humor. No, he was rather serious and solemn and way too uptight about everything. Yet, something about him magnetized her. She had never felt so attracted to anyone before.

William must have sensed her attraction for him. That almost kiss in the car on the way to the Marble Mountains—she had stopped him. But she had wanted it. She had wanted that kiss so badly she could almost taste the wanting this moment.

She straightened and shook her head. No. She would not come between him and his partner.

The wisest thing would be to stay away from the temptation of William Darcy, she decided.