Rent A Husband (15 page)

Carlotta, at her post at the window yesterday afternoon saw Darcy Pringle drive off in her SUV.

And she hasn’t returned.

Her house is in darkness.

Her garage door yawns on the empty interior.

Carlotta checks the display on the digital clock beside Walt: 5:53 a.m.

Where is Darcy Pringle?

And, more importantly, who is she with?

Not Eric Royce, Carlotta knows that much.

The little swish didn’t leave his house last night and his bedroom light clicked off at a sedate 10:24 p.m.

No, Darcy Pringle has some kind of date.

Some assignation.

And not knowing who it’s with is gnawing away at the lining of Carlotta’s gut.

When she hears the low rumble of a car she rockets across to the window and cracks the drapes.

Darcy’s SUV drives into the garage of her house and the door closes.

After a few moments a light comes on downstairs and, as Carlotta watches, the glow of a lamp warms the bedroom curtains.

Who has Darcy been with?

Carlotta will find out.

Even if it kills her.

37

Darcy gets as far wetting her left foot in the shower when she backs out and turns off the spray.

No, she decides, she wants to fall asleep with the heady perfume of sex on her body.

And if this makes her blush, well, she has done a lot more blushworthy things in the last couple of hours.

When she reaches her bed she ignores her PJs laid out on the chair and slips naked beneath the covers.

She clicks off the lamp and lies in the dark, feeling more alive, more vital than she has in years.

The last few hours have already taken on the quality of a dream.

How could she have been so up-front?

So predatory?

And she feels a little twinge of guilt about charging the suite and the three bottles of champagne to her credit card.

Then she has to laugh when she imagines Porter’s face as he opens the card account.

Imagines the questions he’ll ask her, about what she was doing in that bungalow and who she was with.

A lady never tells
, she’ll say, borrowing Forrest Forbes’s line.

Forrest.

Sex with him had been a revelation.

He was so different from Porter.

Sex for Porter, like everything else, had been all about him.

He hadn’t been a bad lover, exactly, but the whole experience had been tailored to his maximum pleasure, Darcy there to provide that pleasure, and if she had a good time too, well that was fine and dandy.

Forrest Forbes had been amazingly unselfish, and his elegant hands were as soft and skilled on her body as they had been on the piano.

The sex had been slow and sensual—none of Porter’s charging to the finish—lifting her to such levels of intense pleasure that she’d heard herself moaning aloud.

With Porter, Darcy had always kept quiet—nothing more than a few muted sighs, knowing instinctively that her ex-husband would have found more vocal expressions of her pleasure unseemly.

But Forrest had encouraged her to express herself—“Don’t worry, Darcy, these walls are thick”—and express herself she had.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Stop, Darcy, she tells herself.

Get a grip.

But as she falls into the most delicious, languid sleep she can remember, she feels Forrest Forbes’s wet skin against hers.

38

Forrest wakes to the sound of a hummingbird, morning sunlight flooding the room, and it takes him few moments to remember where he is.

When he does, and remembers who he was with, he sneaks a glance at the other side of the bed and sees that it’s empty.

He listens for sounds from the bathroom and hears nothing.

As he sits, a familiar weight taps against his breastbone and he sees that his mother’s wedding ring has been returned to the chain around his neck.

Darcy must have done it while he slept.

He stands and pads naked through to the living room.

“Darcy?”

No reply.

He checks the absurdly ostentatious bathroom.

Empty.

Reaching for one of the wall-mounted phones he calls reception and is told that
Madame
checked out a few hours ago after settling the tab.

Laughing, Forrest sits down at the piano.

How many times has he done this?

Quietly dressed and left some woman—hair a bird’s nest on her pillow—asleep while he snuck out?

Too many times to count.

But this is the first time it has ever been done to him.

When he finds his hands playing “A Day in the Life of a Fool” he withdraws them from the keyboard and walks into the bedroom to dress.

39

Eric Royce is no Carlotta McCourt, but he has been keeping a weather eye on the home of his neighbor and friend—
erstwhile friend
?—and couldn’t help but notice when she drove away yesterday afternoon, and that her house was still in darkness when he went to sleep.

He knows that Forrest Forbes showed up for the
SpyCam
casting session yesterday.

Does that mean he wined and dined Darcy last night?

Eric, in his kitchen drinking a freshly squeezed fruit juice, is thinking of calling Forrest when his iPhone phone rings.

Darcy.

Eric hesitates, then answers in his breeziest voice, “Darling.”

“Are you in the kitchen?”

“Yes, why?”

“Look out the window.”

He does as she says, staring out at Darcy’s house over the hedge, and sees something white dangling from her bedroom window, catching the breeze.

“Why are you shaking a bed sheet out of your window?”

“Because I don’t have a white flag.”

“You’re surrendering?”

“Let’s call it a truce.”

He laughs. “Okay.”

“Meet me for breakfast at the Book & Bean?”

“You’re on.”

40

Brontë Baines is terribly, terribly late.

Her shift started ten minutes ago and she’s still at the florist, spending money she doesn’t have on fresh flowers.

She hurriedly makes a selection, pays, and sprints from the store, arms filled with the flowers, bottles of wine (for William, she’s a teetotaler) and bread and cheese.

Of course, she runs into the path of an oncoming truck and narrowly avoids death.

Reaching the sidewalk at the Book & Bean she risks a glance into the coffee shop and sees the horrible Carlotta McCourt lurking at her window table.

William, his back to Brontë, is serving her.

Brontë takes the opportunity to dash past the bookstore with her booty and clatter upstairs to her small apartment.

She stows the wine and cheese in the tiny refrigerator and shoves the flowers into water.

That’ll have to do for now.

During her half-hour lunch break she’ll sneak up and arrange the flowers and make the little place look as inviting as she can.

Position the candles and set up the old turntable and speakers she bought cheap from a junk shop near the liquor store yesterday.

Managed to get the man at the store to throw in some records, too.

Dance music.

The kind of old tunes the William waltzed to when she’d spied on him at the Senior Center.

She’s going to invite William to join her for cheese and wine this evening after work.

Then she’s going to play one of those old discs and invite him to dance.

And, if things go according to plan, that will be the beginning of a beautiful romance.

She locks up and flies down the stairs, wondering when she should issue her invitation.

It’ll have to be later
, she decides.

The coffee shop is filling up and she waves at the flustered looking William, mouthing
sorry
as she grabs menus and hurries over to where Darcy Pringle has just joined Eric Royce.

41

“My God, darling, I want what you’re on. You look radiant,” Eric says as Darcy sits opposite him.

“Nonsense. I have bags under my eyes.”

“Well, if you do, they’re Louis Vuitton.”

Darcy laughs, and not even Carlotta McCourt lurking at a window table can dampen her good spirits.

They order, then Darcy reaches over and takes Eric’s hand. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

“Bygones?”

“Bygones.”

“I want to thank you for fixing me up with Forrest.”

She lifts a hand when she sees he’s about to protest.

“I know it all, Eric, and it’s fine. It was the best thing that could have happened.”

“Has it mended your broken heart?”

“No, but it’s mended something else.”

“Don’t be crude, darling,” he says, leaning in close, eager not to miss a word.

“Spending time with Forrest did wonders for my self-esteem. He made me feel better about myself than I have in a long while.”

“So, what was he like? Spill!”

“Close your eyes.” He obeys. “Now imagine that hottest, sexiest night you can.”

“I’m imagining.”

“Okay, now double it.”

He opens his eyes, grinning.

“I may need an iced coffee.” He takes her hand. “So you’re going to see him again?”

“No. Never.”

“Why not?”

“Forrest Forbes is a onetime experience, like skydiving or base jumping. Something you’ll never forget but don’t dare repeat.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Quite sure.”

Their breakfast comes and as they make small talk, Darcy feels a sense of well-being and optimism.

Maybe she has a future, after all.

Eric shoots a cuff and looks at his wristwatch. “I have to dash. I’m interviewing a new pool man in five minutes.”

“You really must get a pool, Eric.”

“It’s on the top of my list.”

He blows her a kiss and hurries out.

Poor Billy Bigelow has been prowling behind the cash register like a caged jungle cat, watching Darcy and Eric.

When Royce gets up to leave, Billy feels Carlotta’s eyes on him and she points a finger toward Darcy.

Billy nods, knowing that if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll never find the courage.

He’s mapping the easiest route through the tables toward Darcy when he sees her stand, leave a banknote under her saucer, and stroll toward the door.

“William?” he turns and sees Brontë at his side.

She moves very quietly, this girl, like a Stealth bomber.

“Yes?” he says.

“May I speak to you?”

“Just give me a moment please, Brontë. I’ll be right back.”

He barges toward the front door trying to head Darcy off and doesn’t see the low display bin of sale books that Brontë placed there a few minutes ago.

Darcy hears a deafening clatter and Poor Billy Bigelow ends up sprawled at her feet, books spread around him.

She crouches. “Billy, are you okay?”

“Yes,” he says. “I’m sorry, I tripped.”

“Yes, you did.”

He stands, dusting himself off.

“No harm done.”

“Good.”

Darcy rises, smiling at him as she opens the door, unleashing the strains of “Greensleeves”.

Billy dogs her heels.

“Darcy?”

“Yes?”

All at once the poor man is tongue tied, and he resorts to pointing at the poster taped to the door, advertising a performance by the local amateur dramatic group.

Billy is trying to say something but gives voice only to a series of glottal grunts, his large frame masking the poster.

When he moves and Darcy sees that it is a one-night-only performance of George Bernard Shaw’s
Pygmalion,
she smiles and understands him as perfectly as if he’s speaking the Queen’s English.

“I’d love to,” she says.

“Huh?”

“I’d
love
to go to the theater with you. Why don’t I meet you here at eight?”

“Okay,” he stammers.

Laughing to herself, Darcy gets into her SUV and drives into a day that seems bursting with promise.

Brontë Baines has heard the entire exchange and as she retreats behind the cash register her vision is blurred by the onset of tears.

“Are you okay, Brontë?” William asks, his command of the English language miraculously restored now that Darcy has gone.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Just a pollen allergy.”

“Oh, that can be nasty. Why don’t you go upstairs and get yourself cleaned up?”

“Yes,” she says, “maybe I’ll do that.”

Once she’s on the stairs she lets the tears come in great flowing rivers and even though Brontë Baines is not by nature a mean-spirited person she feels hatred in her heart.

Hatred for that perky little blonde with her smile and her flashy car.

Hatred for Darcy Pringle.

42

Carlotta’s SUV—gallingly a couple of years older than Darcy’s—is parked beside her neighbor’s in the small lot adjacent to the Book & Bean, and the two woman arrive at their cars simultaneously.

“Hi, Lottie.”

“Hi, Darcy.”

Darcy slides into her car.