PERFECT (14 page)

“No problem. I
have nothing else to do.” She laced her arms over her chest, protecting herself
from the attraction between them, just like he was doing by stepping back.
“We’re going to have fun.”

“Dylan, it’s
almost eight,” his mother called from down the hall. “We have your laptop set
up on the dining room table.”

“That’s fine,
mom,” he replied. “Be there in a minute.”

Darcy licked her
suddenly dry lips. “I better go.”

Dylan stepped in
front of her and grabbed her hands. His rough fingers brushed against the back
of her hands, electrifying every nerve in her body.

“Stay.”

“I feel like I’d
be intruding on something very personal.” She shook her head.

“Stay,” he said
softly.

Her pulse
quickened.

“Why?” She
searched his eyes, wondering if he was considering reneging on his friendship
position with her. Tom’s words kept echoing in her mind and she was definitely
having second thoughts.

He glanced toward
the kitchen window. “Because it started to snow. I want to follow you, to make
sure you get back to Tom’s okay.”

Her heart would’ve
plumped to the floor, if she’d believed his reason was true. But her gut told
her neither snow nor her inability to drive in it were the causes for him
asking her to stay. “It’s a light snow. Flurries actually. I think I can handle
flurries.”

He squeezed her
hands while lifting his eyes to the ceiling for a quick glance, like he was
asking for courage, or something. “Okay. I’d like to show you something.”

She tilted her
head to the side and slanted her eyes up at him. “What?”

“My art.”

His work was at
his house. His home. His empty home, where they could be alone.

She nodded once.

Attraction sizzled
in the inches separating them.

He leaned toward
her.

She leaned toward
him and closed her eyes, anticipating his lips brushing across hers, softly,
wantonly like they had just a few days ago.

“Dylan,” his
mother called. “Thirty seconds.”

She blinked and
saw the distance grow between them.

“Come on.” He
pulled her along with him.

“No.” She tugged
back. “I’ll wait in the living room.”

He nodded his
understanding of her desire to give their family privacy. With his hand on the
small of her back, he led her down the hall toward the front rooms. She went
right into the living room and he went left to join his family who edged the
large table.

Darcy sat in the
room, flipping through a Christmas shopping catalog from the local country
store and trying not to eavesdrop in on the conversation occurring in the next
room.

She had to stifle
a giggle when the girls announced to their mother that their Uncle Dylan had a
girlfriend and her name was Darcy and that Darcy was from far away and talked
funny. Her joy fell when Dylan quickly explained that she was a friend of Tom’s
who was visiting and helping him out a little with Christmas preparations. She
tried to reason that he was indeed telling the truth, but still her heart had
hoped for something more. Maybe a confession that he did indeed like her.

 About fifteen
minutes later, Lilac led the girls from the dining room. They stopped to say
goodnight and thanked her for the cookies, before Dylan’s mom ushered them up
the stairs to bed. Assuming the Skype visit was over, Darcy pushed off the
couch and walked out into the foyer. Dylan and his father still sat at the
table, staring at the laptop’s screen. Both of their faces were etched with tension
and slightly pale.

She heard a woman
cry. “I know I shouldn’t be worried,” the voice coming from the laptop said.
“But no one will say anything. I haven’t spoken to Bob in over three weeks. I
don’t know where he is. Every time I hear of action, I panic and wait for
someone to come and tell me that—”

The woman, whom
Darcy assumed was Elizabeth, didn’t have to say the words. The meaning was loud
and clear. Elizabeth was worried over her husband’s safety.

“I thought you
spoke to Bob last week?” Angst pitched Dylan’s tone.

“I lied. I didn’t
want you and the girls to worry too.”

She hurt for
Elizabeth and the two angels upstairs. Their whole lives would change if
something happened to Bob. Not only them. Gray and Lilac, Bob’s parents, would
suffer the unspeakable, losing a child.

And Dylan. She
traced the outline of his face, tight with worry. He would lose his big
brother. The man he idolized. The man he was trying so much to be like.

“Listen, Liz.
Everything is going to be fine,” Dylan said calmly, shifting forward on his
seat. “No news is good news, right?”

Elizabeth’s
sniffle sounded in the room. Her ‘yes’ was weak.

“I’ll lay you odds
that before the week is through, you’ll hear from Bob. He knows how much you’re
probably worrying. He’ll find a way to get in touch with you.”

“You think so.”

“I know so. Right,
Dad?” He elbowed his father.

Gray broke out of
his own thoughts. “Yes of course. He’ll be in contact with you ASAP if I know
Bob.”

Dylan glanced her
way and caught her standing in the archway, hugging the wall, listening. He
smiled and nodded.

On top of
everything else he had to deal with, he had to be the strong one for everyone
in his family.

Darcy understood
when he’d begged off showing her his art after he’d finished talking to
Elizabeth which was a relief. He couldn’t get his mind off of his brother and
sister-in-law and she had enough problems with her restaurant. She didn’t need
to hear any more of his worries.

After she’d driven
off, his father mentioned he wanted to get his copy of the township by-laws
which he still had stored at Dylan’s house. The old man wanted do some light
reading tonight, and before the township meeting tomorrow night, meaning Gray
Kincaid had every intention of checking the board’s P’s and Q’s. So, like a
good son, Dylan offered to drive Dad over to the house. He wanted to check on
the place anyway.

Pulling up to his
rustic log cabin built by his father and mother thirty-seven years ago, Dylan
thought how lifeless the structure seemed. There wasn’t a warm glow in any of the
windows. No Christmas wreath hung on the door. No sign of energy. It didn’t
feel… comforting.

“Are you okay?”
Moonlight reflecting off the snow lit the vehicle’s cab enough that he saw the
concern in father’s narrowing eyes. “Dylan, Bob will be fine. I know my sons.”

He kept the truck
running to hold off the winter cold. Warm air circulated from under the dash,
keeping their legs warm. “I wasn’t thinking about Bob. I was thinking about
this place and how it doesn’t feel like home. It feels like… I don’t know, just
a house.”

“Like it’s
temporary. You’re not thinking of selling the place, are you?”

“No. I don’t think
of this place as temporary.” He tilted his head back and forth in deliberation.
He bought the place from his parents five years ago when they decided they
wanted to spend their lives traveling around the country like nomads. Both he
and Bob loved it the farm, but Bob had own house already. It had made sense for
him to buy it. Unlike his brother who went off to college for six years and
worked in an office as a civil engineer, he loved the outdoors. He loved maple
tree farming. He loved the creativity working with the earth channeled into his
artworks. He had every intention of living out his life here. “Well, maybe I
do, but not that I’m going to move away from it. More in the sense that it has
to change.”

“Ah. Now I
understand.” Gray slapped his knee.

“You do?”

“Yup. My boy is
growing up.”

He rolled his
eyes. “I grew up a long time ago.”

“Physically, yes.”
Gray poked his gloved forefinger to his head. “But life wise, you’re catching
up.”

Dylan’s interest
piqued. He shifted on his seat and folded his arms across his chest. “Okay. You
want to tell me what you’re talking about?”

Gray stretched his
legs out like he was settling in for a long tale. “My grandmamma had a saying.
A house is house. But home is a family. Your home is with the girls right now.
Watching over those two little ones has made you long for a family of your
own.” He splayed his hands out in front of him like he was opening a curtain hung
across the windshield. “And this here, the house, the land, is missing the
energy only a family can provide.” His father shook a finger at him. “You might
think I’m crazy—”

“No. I don’t think
you’re crazy. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about settling down.”

“Does Darcy have
anything to do it?”

“I thought about
having a family of my own before Darcy showed up.”

“But now that she
has, you can’t imagine that family without her?”

“Something like
that.” He nodded once. “Crazy. I know. I’ve known her what, four days?”

“No. Not crazy at
all. Do you know how long I knew your mother before I knew I was going to spend
the rest of my life with her?”

Dylan shook his
head.

“One night. I
didn’t know her before. Her best friend had a date with my best friend and was
nervous as hell. Ann, that was your mother’s best friend, insisted she come
along, so Neil, my best friend, called me up. I wasn’t going to meet them, but
I owed him a favor, so I caved and met them at the local dairy bar. I’ll never
forget the moment our eyes met for the first time. It was magical.” He raised
his hand to his chest. “I knew right then, she was the girl for me and we
hadn’t spoken a word. So do I think you’re crazy thinking of Darcy as the woman
to complete you? Hell, no.”

“My situation is a
little different, dad.”

“How?”

“You and mom were
what, seventeen, sixteen?”

“We were seventeen
and age has nothing to do with it.”

“Sure it does.
Both Darcy and I have our lives, careers and responsibilities. I have a life
here and she has hers in South Carolina.”

“You can’t paint
in South Carolina?”

“Sure.” The air in
the cab became stuffy. He turned off the heater and cracked down his window an
inch. “Yes, but I can’t milk maples there.”

“So you do something
else,” Gray said matter-of-fact, like a life change was as easy as changing a
pair of socks.

“You’re seriously
telling me to give up the farm?” He pointed to the house. “I love this place.
You love this place.”

“All I’m saying is
if you love Darcy, it doesn’t matter where you live or what you do for a
living. This farm shouldn’t be the deciding factor.” He unzipped his coat,
apparently getting warm too. “I’ll make it easy for you. Your mother and I will
buy it back from you, or we’ll rent it from you. That will give you time to
decide where you want to live.”

“What about the
girls?”

“What about them?
Bob and Elizabeth will be coming home safely, son, and when they do they’ll be
a family again. If you decide to follow Darcy before then, your mother and I
will stay with them.”

His father was
completely serious. He stared at the house. His father thought he was making it
easy for him, but how could he give up everything for a woman he hardly knew,
one who agreed to be only friends and nothing more?

“I’m going to get
those papers.” His father pushed the door open and cold, fresh air spilled into
the cab. “I’ll take a walk through the house, if you want to stay here.”

Dylan heard the
door close, but he was so deep in thought he didn’t move. Darcy had made it
clear she had every intention of leaving right after the holidays. She’d
mentioned she’d been working on new plans for her restaurant’s remodel and
wanted to include some of his works in the décor. He’d heard her on her cell
phone with her contractor and her lawyer. She’d mentioned the number of days
until she left here while talked to Mrs. Farber last night. And more than once
she said she couldn’t wait to get someplace warm. To him, all those tidbits
added up to the fact that Darcy couldn’t wait to leave Black Moose Mountain and
leave him behind.

They were just
friends and nothing more.

Dylan insisted on
picking her up. The weather man on the local T.V. station predicted a good
possibility of heavier snowfall tonight, up to six inches. Dylan said it was
excellent news for the ski industry, but for her to drive to Tom’s alone after
she’d stayed with the girls while he worked, not so good. According to the
Vermont mountain man, Dixie girls didn’t do snow very well.

At the blare of
his vehicle’s horn, her heart leaped in her chest. She shrugged into her coat
and hefted the box of ingredients she’d bought today at the general store off
the kitchen counter. Balancing the load on her knee, she turned the front
doorknob and then struggled to urge the door open with her foot.